The Spy Who Dumped Me: Film Review
I had no idea who Kate McKinnon was until she was cast in the Ghostbusters reboot and then I fell under her spell and have loved her ever since. She’s so funny and captivating onscreen, so it’s no surprise she was the best thing about The Spy Who Dumped Me.
She plays Morgan, the best friend of Audrey (Mila Kunis), who discovers her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux), who just dumped her and disappeared, was a CIA agent. They unwittingly become part of an international conspiracy and are chased by assassins and agents (like Sam Heughan) across Europe after they end up in possession of a precious item that everyone wants.
It was easy to write this simple plot summary, but I couldn’t possibly describe what happens from beginning to end because it becomes a total mess. There are so many twists and turns that I couldn’t explain who the true bad boys were and what their motives were. I never expected to find this plot so hard to understand, but it was so convoluted, poorly explained, and confusing. The film was also way too long and I found my concentration starting to wane as I no longer cared about what happened because I had stopped being able to follow it.
It starts off very strong and was entertaining straight off the bat. McKinnon and Kunis are formidable forces when it comes to comedy, so together they were brilliant. Their chemistry was great and they carried the movie and made it substantially better than the material. They clearly improvised a lot, to varying degrees of success. There are a lot of jokes, with McKinnon really throwing everything into it, and some work but others don’t so much. Some of them were awesome though and I laughed out loud a lot.
I’m not entirely sure what genre this was going for, but it was far more violent than I expected it to be. I just thought it was going to be a fun action comedy but this is R-rated stuff and much more threatening, bloody and hardcore than I expected. It is a blurred mix of buddy comedy and intense action thriller, which doesn’t always work. It should have picked one and done that well.
The Spy Who Dumped Me does have some problems with the messy, confusing plot and its genre/tone but it is so much fun – I had a really good time with it, even if I didn’t understand it fully. The action sequences were excellent, the locations were cool, and the two leads were awesome. It’s just a shame it couldn’t sustain itself the whole way through.
In cinemas Wednesday 22nd August