Spy

Released:  June 5^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  20^th Century Fox

Starring:  Melissa McCarthy, Jason Statham, Rose Byrne, Miranda Hart, Bobby Cannavale, Allison Janney, Jude Law

Directed by:  Paul Feig

Written by:  Paul Feig

Personal Bias Alert:  not into broad comedy, haven’t seen any of Paul Feig’s movies

6 of 10

            The recent renaissance of commercially and critically successful James Bond flicks like Casino Royale and Skyfall have thrust the spy movie back into the spotlight.  Such success inevitably brings about parodies, homages, and comedic twists, littering cinemas with all variations on the genre.  2015 has already seen the homage-heavy Kingsman:  The Secret Service, and now we have the action-comedy Spy by writer/director Paul Feig.  Feig has openly spoken about how 2006’s Casino Royale planted the idea for Spy in his brain, and the years of gestation seems to have done the project some good.  For as broad of a comedy as it is, it’s remarkably well-balanced, delivery incessant comedy with smartly placed action.

            Feig again brings his female-lead twist, casting longtime collaborator Melissa McCarthy as the aspiring spy and filling out the rest of the cast with a raft of prominent women.  Miranda Hart appears as her sidekick, Allison Janney as her boss, and Rose Byrne as the main baddie.  Jude Law has the most prominent male role, and even he’s largely relegated to memories after a botched mission leads McCarthy into the field. 

Such female-driven films are slowly becoming more common, in no small part thanks to Feig and McCarthy, but rarely do we get to see the ladies dominating the action like they do here.  And I mean action, as McCarthy and company feature prominently in several rough-and-tumble sequences.  All are littered with quippy asides to maintain a light mood, but many are so well-choreographed that they are more than capable of standing on their own swivel-kicking feet.  Feig shows a good eye for capturing the action, using energetic cuts to keep it feeling rough without sacrificing continuity.  Similar camerawork is used throughout the film, helping to smooth the transition between the comedy and action elements.

Where the film stumbles is in its comedy, delivering the same ridiculous, mean-spirited jokes over and over again.  Feig must like McCarthy, otherwise they wouldn’t work together so much, but you wouldn’t know it by watching Spy.  Most of the time, her character is the continuous butt of jokes.  There is a sense that the jokes come from a place of misunderstanding, that everyone around her is only doing it based on incorrect assumptions about her appearance, but the fact that she becomes just as nasty as her compatriots takes away any chance this film had to teach a lesson about how incorrect this thinking is.  To be fair, McCarthy isn’t the only one to get picked on.  Everyone gets the hammer dropped on them at one point or another.  In fact, calling this film mean-spirited is incredibly nice of me, much nicer than the film is to its characters.  There are other, smarter ways of being funny.  Feig could have at least mixed it up a bit.

Despite the uphill battle, McCarthy remains a mostly likable presence.  She and all the other actors are hamstrung by paper-thin characters and a supremely traditional plot, but most operate adequately within these confines.  Jude Law and Rose Byrne make out the best, wringing their characters for all the smarm they’re worth without mugging for the camera.  Most of the cast seem happy enough to deliver their lines with all the clunk of a network sitcom, but it seems that Spy wasn’t aiming for much more than that.

Other Notes:

Ø  I like Rose Byrne in all these comedies she’s doing.

Ø  On the other hand, I didn’t like Jason Statham’s appearance.  I don’t blame Statham, I blame the irksome writing.

Ø  Someone will have to explain to me what’s funny about the pest infestations, because I didn’t get it.

Ø  In the film’s defense, I seemed to be much less enthused than the people at my screening were.  Perhaps the problem lies with me.

The Duff

Released:  February 20^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Lionsgate

Starring:  Mae Whitman, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Allison Janney, Ken Jeong

Directed by:  Ari Sandel

Written by:  Josh A. Cagan

Personal Bias Alert:  not a big Mae Whitman fan, this was a book?

3.8 of 10

            A little advice:  don’t begin your movie by referencing an infinitely better one.  That’s exactly what The Duff does, using a famous line from The Breakfast Club to set up that old high school cliques are gone and have been replaced by new, equally hurtful labels.  This may be true (I’m not a high schooler, so what do I know), but the problem with bringing up a movie like The Breakfast Club, one that uses a simplistic premise to explore deep-rooted problems, is that it primes the audience for a smart, skewering look at high school dynamics.  So if your movie isn’t that, which The Duff certainly isn’t, then you’re only priming your audience for a letdown.

            What I can’t figure out is if The Duff realizes that it isn’t smart.  It’s a basic story:  girl finds out what others think of her, girl dislikes the label, girl enlists the help of hot neighbor boy to teach her how to be cool…  If you can’t figure out the rest, then you haven’t seen many high school movies.  Now, a basic plot doesn’t sink a movie, but you have to do something intelligent with the script to make up for it.  The Duff, it seems, doesn’t realize that.  Everything is reductive, from its vapid version of high school to its banal final lesson.  Nearly every aspect of this film can be traced back to other, better movies, making you wonder if writer Josh A. Cagan was even trying for something original.

            There’s a barometer I use for high school movies, one that almost always weeds out the good from the bad, that The Duff fails spectacularly.  I refer to it as the ‘Schoolmate Agency’ test.  Basically, do the students lingering around in the background have their own things to do or are they constantly reacting to whatever the main characters are up to?  Good movies like Mean Girls, Juno, or The Perks of Being a Wallflower understand that these characters have their own group of friends and wouldn’t spend much time tormenting or caring about the main character’s problems.  Bad movies like The Duff have shots of the entire student body stopping their life to ridicule or applaud whatever has happened to the main character.  The former gives the film an air of familiarity, because that’s how high school actually is.  The latter makes it seem like we’re in fairytale land, which occasionally is used for great humor (see Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion) but is most often ignored by the filmmakers.  At best, this sheen is merely annoying.  At worst, it’s a fatal blow, one that’s especially deadly to a movie that’s pretending to be smart.

            All those failures being said, there are a few meager moments of respite in this film, and most of it comes from the two leads.  Mae Whitman as the titular Duff Bianca and Robbie Amell as Wes, her attractive but dumb neighbor, kinda nail their parts.  They’re likable, funny, and have great chemistry.  If you’ve been paying attention to the rest of my review, then you’ll be able to guess that they aren’t given much depth, but they commit to what they have and make you want to smile along with them.  And that’s coming from someone who hasn’t particularly cared for Mae Whitman in the past.

            The bottom line is that this is a dumb movie.  The characters are dumb, their conflicts are dumb, and the resolution is dumb.  Yes, some of the jokes of funny, but everything else is a dull failure.  If you want jokes, go watch a stand-up routine.  You’ll get more laughs for your buck.

            Other Notes:

Ø  This movie constantly contradicts itself.  Bianca claims that Wes is too ashamed to talk to her in school despite the fact that he constantly instigates conversations with her at school.  It claims that old school cliques á la The Breakfast Club now longer exists, then points out the cliques in a montage of Duff identifications.  The list goes agonizingly on.

Ø  Apparently, the book this is based on has a totally different plot.  I’m wondering if it is better or worse than the movie.

Ø  That was the tamest Urban Dictionary entry I’ve ever seen.