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When I found out I was going to see Dave Bautista’s latest comedy My Spy (Peter Segal), I did not have high expectations. The only promo I’d seen for the film were posters on the sides of Dublin buses and they didn’t inspire hope (or really any feelings to be honest). Plus, I’d been told Bautista’s previous action comedy, Stuber (Michael Dowse), was the “most forgettable movie of 2019”. But surprisingly, My Spy isn’t a steaming pile of horse manure, it’s just aggressively mediocre. However, aspects of it such as its target audience and its portrayal of gay men provoked far more thought than I expected, which is something, I guess.

My Spy is essentially about a tough CIA agent named JJ (Bautista) who ends up forming an unlikely friendship with a precocious little girl called Sophie (Chloe Coleman) who wants to be just like him. If you want a more in-depth plot summary, just watch the trailer: it tells you everything. 

The film is entirely predictable, but Dave Bautista was actually very strong, and I did laugh a few times during the film. That said, the most I laughed was at how bad the villain’s ‘French’ accent was. Chloe Coleman’s performance was decent but the dialogue for most characters, other than Bautista, is so unoriginal and most punchlines fall flat. It wasn’t an unbearable film experience by any means, but, if not for Bautista, it could have been.

The thing that struck me most after watching My Spy was that I just couldn’t tell who it was made for. I had assumed it was a PG movie for kids. But call me Will Hays, even for a 12A (PG-13) movie, I was surprised by the amount of swearing and overt references to Dave Bautista’s balls, so I can’t imagine many parents will want to bring their kids to see it. But on the flip slide, I don’t think this film appeals to 12-year-olds and up because Chloe Coleman’s character is only nine. As a former child myself, I think you prefer to see movies with kids that are either your age or older, unless it’s a Christmas movie. Furthermore, My Spy is just too immature to appeal to adults. Maybe it will succeed, but after I saw it, I just kept wondering why was this film made? And that did have a major impact on my viewing experience.

To add insult to injury, there are some aspects that are impossible to look past in the year of our lord 2020. My Spy really does feel like it was written in the early 2000s and ended up washing up on 2020 cinema screens.

Firstly, My Spy’s writers just don’t understand how social media and trends work. My granny has a better understanding of Instagram than this film and she’s dead. And if I have to witness Dave Bautista whipping and nae-naeing one more time, I might just have to join her. 

Secondly, My Spy thinks it’s a ‘woke’ film but it’s actually very problematic.  The cast of the film is pretty racially diverse which is good to see, but its portrayal of gay characters? Not so much. In My Spy, two of the neighbours in the apartment complex are a gay couple. At face value, this is a good thing as these are gay characters that can’t be cut out of the film for international release (I’m looking you Disney). However, their portrayal is just so stereotypical. Carlos (Devere Rogers) is extremely flamboyant while Todd (Noah Dalton Danby) is incredibly stoic, literally grunting instead of speaking. This stereotype is so played out and it just feels like it comes at the expense of gay audience members. This idea is supported by the fact that the film thinks that Sophie calling JJ’s partner a lesbian is a funny insult (she isn’t lesbian by the way). 

Lastly, it serves as propaganda for the US Army and the CIA, which is nothing new in film. Still though, I don’t think it’s good for kids to see a movie that glorifies a man who kills people for a living for organisations with track records like the US Army and the CIA, and a parent in the film who felt the same way was made a mockery of so… thanks? (I’d also watched the film Missing (Costa Gavras, 1982) the night before which perhaps had me in a fairly anti-USA mood, sorry.)

My Spy is a bang-on average corporate comedy that tries to appeal to everyone and appeals to no one. I do hope Dave Bautista gets better leading roles in the future because he definitely showed he can be more than just Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014). Overall though, I didn’t pay to see this film, and neither should you.

 

My Spy is in Irish cinemas from March 13.