My Spy (USA / 12A / 99 mins)
In short: Daffy but amusing
Sort of. It depends on how much an audience buys into the concept and can overlook the various plot holes and the unlikelihood of it all. It’s a cousin of Luc Besson’s Leon – and a distant one at that. Dial down the violence, a histrionic bad guy and the revenge plot and replace it with cuddly family hi-jinks and you end up with My Spy as JJ bonds with Sophie and learns a thing or two about getting in touch with his emotions. A plot like that also depends heavily on the actors selling the performances. Fortunately for director Peter Segal, he’s on to a winner with the double act of Dave Bautista and Chloe Coleman. Bautista can do both the tough guy act and the comedian very well, so he maintains his composure – and his character – as he suffers all manner of awkward situations. Coleman is a delight too, selling the smart kid act with aplomb. The duo just about keep the film afloat.
There are two films at work here – a moderately aggressive action film and a cutesy surrogate parent film, hence the harder 12A rating. Americans may not notice so much because they’re inured to it, but from an international perspective there is a slightly worrying amount of gun play on display here for a supposedly family-friendly film. How these two films gel together is a source of friction as the story moves away from the bad guys and then returns to it – just in case we’d forgotten amidst the ice skating, ice cream and dinner dates. At least the bad guys are properly bad rather than evil, sneering property developers trying to knock down an orphanage or whatever usually counts for villainy in a film of this type. My Spy is fast, breezy and doesn’t overstay its welcome and should keep families entertained and amused. Just don’t expect to remember it the following day.
Rating: 3 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor