*Originally written August 29th, 2018*
Urgh, I went into this with at least the expectation of a throwaway, but entertaining action-comedy like last years The Hitman's Bodyguard, but I didn't even get that. What I got instead was a pretty unbearable two hours that felt like three. A completely forgettable and eye-rollingly bad comedy.
I just don't know where to begin with this. Everything is just so plain, safe and boring about this. It's another adult rated spy comedy that is clearly trying to be a good time, but just comes off as boring. I'm usually a fan of Mila Kunis, so I was shocked to find myself wishing I was watching either of the Bad Moms films instead during the run-time. The only moment of real enjoyment I got out of this was Kunis playing Point Blank on an arcade machine. The Point Blank light shooter games are something me and my sister used to play on PS1 all the time and they are so underappreciated, so it was weird to see it pop up out of nowhere in this film.
You could argue that Kate McKinnon and Kunis have decent enough chemistry together here, but it's always undercut by McKinnon just being utterly annoying. I remember McKinnon being one of the better parts of Ghostbusters (2016). Here she is in nearly every scene and she is grating. I came to the shocking revelation that she's the female equivalent to Jim Carey at his worst. Annoying, overbearing and filled with so many punchable facial expressions. It felt like an endurance test at times. It's also shame that 90% of the conversations between the two female leads is just talking about men.
McKinnon aside, all the other comedy completely fails. I didn't laugh once. It's a complete mess of tone. One moment we get some crude joke and some cock and balls thrown in our face, the next we've got our lead characters cracking jokes are an innocent Uber driver is shot in the head next to them. It was bizarre, these characters are put in this situations where innocent people are murdered in front of them and they just joke about it. It all felt so mean-spirited and made Kunis and McKinnon so unlikable.
As a spy film it goes exactly where you'd expect. Every reveal and twist is in your face from the get-go and it goes on and it. This film in no way earns its 2 hour run-time. This could have been so much more bearable with a leaner 90 minutes. So much of this is just annoying overlong filler. I just wanted it to end.
There are at least some decent action scenes here and there, it's a little frantic, but the ideas are there and I did appreciate how messy some of the violence was. Usually the deaths in these sorts of comedies are pretty clean overlooked. Here, it is messy and bloody. The aftermath of a restaurant massacre made for a more disturbing moment than funny. Just seeing the place covered in blood and dead bodies was just so off. I really don't know what they were going for here.
If you like shit comedies and enjoy Kate McKinnon you might have a better time than I did with The Spy Who Dumped Me, but for me, this was just a painful and boring chore to get through. I only saw it yesterday and most of it has left my mind already, so that's probably for the best.
3/10 Dans
The Spy Who Dumped Me is out now in cinemas in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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