A buddy cop comedy about two best friends who are caught up in a dangerous mission after one of them finds out that her ex boyfriend is a spy.
Directed by: Susanna Fogel
Written by: Susanna Fogel and David Iserson
Actors: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Justin Theroux and Sam Heughan
Year: 2018
MPAA Rating: R
Online Stores: https://www.thespywhodumpedme.movie
Review by Simone Torn
I think I got myself a bit more excited than I should have for The Spy Who Dumped Me. Like everyone with a beating heart, I am a huge fan of Kate McKinnon, so I couldn’t wait to see the SNL queen take the big screen alongside the classically lovable Mila Kunis to star in a buddy cop comedy directed by-gasp!- a woman! It sounds like a brilliant idea for a film right?
I thought so too.
The key element to any buddy cop comedy is the chemistry between its leading characters. Unfortunately, I’ve had better chemistry with my high school janitor than Kunis and McKinnon seem to have with each other. It’s almost as though Kunis is struggling to keep her eyes open throughout the film, while McKinnon nearly swings her way via trapeze out of the screen to try to keep the audience from leaving the theatre.
Another key element to any buddy cop comedy is- well- comedy. You’d think with a lead as hilarious as the slapstick ball of energy that is Kate McKinnon, we’d get a lot of laughs. Unfortunately, the most noise that came out of the movie theatre was a couple of light giggles and a loud yawn coming from the guy behind me. There were plenty of moments throughout TSWDM where I thought a scene would end on some hilarious joke within the comedy of errors we’ve seen thus far. Okay, yeah, it’s been pretty unfunny up till this point, but maybe now that Kate McKinnon is about to crash a circus performance on a trapeze it’ll cause something outrageously hilarious to happen, right??
Wrong.
Instead, we get a character falling off a circus trapeze and landing on a giant metal pike which leads to her violently gory (and violently unfunny) death. Really? Is that the moment we want to end on here? And why is this movie so much more brutal than it is comedic? I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with having comedic actors play more serious roles. Afterall, some of my favorite movies do just that, (Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, Mo’Nique in Precious.) But this movie isn’t supposed to be serious, nor does it advertise itself as such. So if The Spy Who Dumped Me isn’t quite serious and it isn’t quite funny, than what is it?
A disposable flick is what it is.
A movie that sleepwalks between its action and its humor, we don’t get the fun loving energy that Susanna Fogel’s film could’ve easily provided.
Oddly enough, amist a startling amount of innocent characters dying gruesome deaths on screen, this movie still manages to have a heart. We see this mostly through McKinnon’s character, Morgan, as she puts nearly all of her energy into loving and supporting her best friend Audrey, played by Kunis. Audrey is a thirty year old dumpee who works at Trader Joe’s and still doesn’t own a bed frame. Despite Audrey’s lack of accomplishments, McKinnon’s character still sees her as the most badass chick on planet earth, which would be heartwarmingly redeeming to the film’s credit, if only Kunis could seem to return that amount of loving energy for her co-star when the character is clearly supposed to.
Nonetheless, the fact that this movie at least tries to emphasize the strength and beauty of female friendship, is still enough to stop TSWDMfrom being terrible. All in all, The Spy Who Dumped Me is a movie with good intentions, that don’t always quite land.