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Over the years, there aren't many action comedy films out there that managed to convincingly pull off its genre ambitions. Fortunately, this one does. Believe it or not, Spy proved itself to be a highly entertaining, incredibly funny and thrilling spy action comedy film with a few surprising plot twists in between.
Susan Cooper, played by Melissa McCarthy, is a shy CIA analyst who's stuck behind a desk all day in CIA headquarters. She's obese and doesn't have any field experience whatsoever. Her main job is to assist active spy agents who are on the field by providing any crucial real-time information to them. This starts to change when her assigned field spy agent Bradley Fine, played by Jude Law, was killed in action. In order to complete the mission, Susan volunteered to go undercover for a track and report only mission to search for the missing portable nuclear device to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, which serves as the film's MacGuffin. Needless to say, she didn't do exactly what she's told by her superior and throws herself right into several unforeseen circumstances.
As a spy action comedy film, I have to say that there's a lot of outrageous, borderline ridiculous, yet remarkably funny action scenes in the film. Although some of them doesn't make much sense at all, but since this is a comedy, cut it some slack, just relax and enjoy the ride. There's a great amount of the usual American slapstick jokes throughout the film to keep the audience entertained. Everyone did a commendable performance in their respective roles, especially Jude Law, Jason Statham, Rose Byrne and most certainly, McCarthy herself. Jude Law is the capable, handsome 'James Bond type' field spy agent while Rose Byrne plays a villain with an exceptional dry sense of humour.
Melissa McCarthy, with her unusual on-screen charisma and witty dialogues, truly outshine herself in her role and once again proved herself to be a brilliant comedy actor when she's given the proper film to act on. It's actually quite funny to see Susan stuck in tough situations that forced her to improvise a way out of them. (Well, to be honest, from her appearance, she's not exactly a spy material.) Surprisingly, it turns out that she's actually more than meets the eye. As the film progresses, it was clearly shown that she's very intelligent, highly capable in combat and has the ability to adapt and react promptly to any situation at hand. However, Jason Statham did a rather unusual role in this film as an incompetent, "all talk, no show" field spy agent (far different compared to his usual action hero roles in the past). He constantly made a lot of outrageous claims about himself as an excellent spy agent but fails to perform well enough to justify his claims, which is another funny element in the film.
There's also a 'James Bond like' opening, a nod to the well-established successful spy franchise. Undercover spy comedy films have been done countless times over the years, but not a lot of them been this much fun and entertaining. Overall, Spy is a fun watch and I've enjoyed it very much. I believe you will as well.
Rating: 7.5/10
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Been quite a long time that I laughed so much in the cinema
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