Spies Like Her

Spy (2015) marks the last of the Netflix movies we saw in 2015 - So I am now caught up and ready to start 2016.

I guess some people might watch Spy because they like dumb, raunchy, gross-out comedies. I watched it out of a sense of obligation. I need to see some new talent, and I've heard Melissa McCarthy is someone to check out. Also, director Paul Feig gets a lot of love, and I am completely out of that loop. So what do I get? A dumb, raunchy, gross-out comedy.

Melissa McCarthy is a controller for a James-Bondian spy (Jude Law). He wears the tux and shoots people, she sits in the basement of the Agency and talks to him on his earpiece. A great team until he gets killed. Although she is dumpy, self-conscious, and unglamorous, she is ready to go into the field to avenge her partner. This causes agent Jason Statham to go rogue in disgust.

So we have something like the old "housewife becomes a spy," mixed with "frump dreams of being glam." One of the main jokes is that her cover identities are always single accountant, cat lady, kindergarten teacher, etc. - to her vocal disgust.

Mostly, I found this to be pretty standard stuff (on par with, for ex, the disappointing Johnny English). We liked the Statham character a lot - explicitly parodying his other roles: "I restarted my own heart with jumper cables!" And it wasn't all that much of a gross-out.

But I've got to get this off my chest: a lot of what is supposed to be so fresh about this is that women, frumpy and glamorous, say "fuck" a lot. That's it, that's the joke. And it sounds awkward when they say it, which is strange, because in the real world, "fuck" is a simple intensifier, used as verbal punctuation about as often as a comma. I mean, fuck, everybody says "fuck", all the fucking time. There's nothing fucking special about it, for fuck's sake. If that is McCarthy or Fieg's shtick, I don't get it.

Still, I plan to watch The Heat, and maybe Bridesmaids, just to make sure.