Spy

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.75 of 5 stars

Dustin: The director/star team of Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy have finally delivered the perfect vehicle for McCarthy’s brand of humor. Spy is a hilarious parody of Bond films and the espionage genre.

Nick: Spy is the funniest movie McCarthy has starred in (including Bridesmaids) though maybe the worst titled. I have yet to meet a person who knew the name of this movie, but still know a Melissa McCarthy movie is out in theaters. I read an interview yesterday where actor Bradley Whitford talks about how studios try to give projects the most generic names possible. Spy comes quite close to the MOST generic possible.

Dustin: I went into this movie a bit wary, feeling let down by their previous attempt (Tammy). This movie had me laughing in the pre-title sequence, and I was hoping they could hold the momentum. Luckily, the movie managed to deliver laughs throughout and had some decently executed action sequences.

Nick: Please don’t mention Tammy. I’m going to go off on a tirade, and we will never get back to Spy! It upsets me McCarthy’s characters most notable quality is they’re fat and also quite mean. Which is the reason most of her films annoy me, but in Spy she is actually a nice person which kind of offsets the fat jokes.

Dustin: She did show some range in the recent film St. Vincent with Bill Murray, which was a great performance from her that wasn’t really talked about because it was more of a Bill Murray film than a Melissa McCarthy one.

Nick: McCarthy did do a great job in St.Vincent, but I don’t consider the movie a starring vehicle for her. The movie was about Vincent’s redemption. If it was about her character’s redemption I can guarantee it would include many fat jokes.

Dustin: I liked how Spy took stylistic elements from the Bond films to establish the tone (which they kept consistent throughout, which is actually a compliment considering how some comedies fail to pull that off). The action sequences weren’t perfect or as well done as most Bond films, but it was certainly better than Taken 2 or Brick Mansions.

Nick: I skipped Taken 2, but I completely agree in terms of Brick Mansions. Most of the action pieces had comedy bits, which kept the tone even. Either coming from Jason Statham’s arrogantly horrible spy or from McCarthy’s moves shocking her villain counterparts.  

Dustin: Jason Statham showed great comedic chops I didn’t realize he was capable of. It was funny an agency that requires U.S. citizenship from its members (and spouses!) would have a Brit “agent.” But given this was a parody of crummy spy films like the Bourne series, it was spot-on.

Nick: The first film I ever saw with Statham was a comedy called Mean Machine. It’s a remake of the Burt Reynold’s Longest Yard, but instead of football they’re playing soccer. Still love that movie, and Statham is the best part. You should check it out. The villains in Spy were also hilarious. Rose Byrne as Rayna was awesome and her henchman was even better with his short but sweet exchanges with McCarthy.

Dustin: This movie was a well-executed comedy. While not a ground-breaking comedy, it did everything it set out to do, which was make a hilarious spy spoof. Actually, this might be the best spy spoof I’ve ever seen, next to The Bourne Supremacy!

Nick: I would need a list of all the spoof movies in order to agree with you, but I can definitely agree that it is the most enjoyable Melissa McCarthy starring vehicle yet!

Tammy

Dustin: 2 of 5 stars Nick: 1 of 5 stars Average: 1.5 of 5 stars (Canary on life support) 

Dustin: Tammy is the latest Melissa McCarthy vehicle in which she plays an abrasive, unselfaware misfit who must learn something about herself and how to get along with others within a 90-minute runtime. It has only the thinnest veneer of a plot, and no real overarching conflict to carry the film. After losing her fast-food job, Tammy goes on a journey with her alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) for no reason other than to get out of town.

Nick: When did Tammy have this revelation that changed her for the better? It happened out of nowhere. She was an obnoxious person who became a slightly less obnoxious person. Why? Ugh, WHY?

Dustin: I agree the emotional “pay offs” didn't really feel earned. The movie didn't get us invested enough in the characters for their arcs to feel satisfying.

Nick: McCarthy seems to love sticking herself in the same role. I would have said it’s Hollywood typecasting, but she wrote the film with her husband, Ben Falcone (who also directed). I get it Melissa! You are fat and will do absolutely anything to sell a laugh. Try something slightly different. 

Dustin: I actually like McCarthy’s on-screen persona. She’s a talented comedic actress and says her lines with impeccable timing that deliver laughs even when the writing isn’t so strong. It was used well in The Heat last year. But this story felt underdeveloped, and I think McCarthy would shine with a better script. 

Nick: I loved her in Bridesmaids, but that might be because she was a tertiary character. As a star she is a dirty, misunderstood, abrasive actress who undergoes an undeserved catharsis somewhere in the middle of all her films. I’ve watched them all recently: The Heat, Identity Thief and Tammy. Tammy is by some distance the worst of these films. You say she’d be better with a better script. She didn’t write Identity Thief, where she didn’t excel, but she did write Tammy, where her performance is only worse because of the script. I wish she could just be a misunderstood, dumb character who is consistently kind instead of randomly being really mean at the beginning and developing into a nice person for no reason by the end. That pretty much sums up all of her star characters. 

Dustin: Identity Thief had the worst arc of her movies. I didn’t buy her turning nice at the end, and her victim willingly carrying out a friendship with her.

This movie also had a disappointing pay off with the relationship between her husband (Nat Faxon) and his lover (Toni Collette). As far as we know the extent of their relationship is a platonic friendship in which he cooks dinner for her. We know Tammy cheated on her husband with the ice cream man (puke!). But at the end we’re supposed to cheer when Collette dumps Faxon for the ice cream man. I feel like we were supposed to cheer at this, but again, this was another undeserved pay off.

Nick: I wanted to skip this film and pull a Thor: The Dark World. During the opening credits, I was actually excited and I thought the film might actually be good. Collette, Sarandon, Allison Janney, Dan Aykroyd, Kathy Bates, Sandra Oh, Mark Duplass (!), Gary Cole and Faxon. Every single one of these actors can make a movie better. Every single one (besides Sarandon) was poorly and hardly used. Collette and Faxon said about 10 words between them when their situation would have called for many more explicit words. All of these characters hardly talk because it’s McCarthy’s film. Even the love interest, Duplass, has a lot of screen time, but hardly says anything. 

Dustin: Did you feel like Susan Sarandon was too young to be Melissa McCarthy’s grandmother? 

Nick: Yep. And Allison Janney was too young to play McCarthy’s mother. And Sarandon was too young to play Janney’s mother. 

Dustin: I found this distracting, and found myself wondering about the age difference, which was an apparent plot hole.

According to the Internets, Melissa McCarthy is 43, Allison Janney is 54, and Susan Saranwrap is 67. Sarandon is only 24 years older than McCarthy--more appropriately her mother than her grandmother. So she would have given birth to Janney at the age of 13, and Janney gave birth to McCarthy at the age of 11. Dan Aykroyd, who plays McCarthy’s father, was 61, so he would have impregnated Janney when he was 18. That’s statutory rape. The movie didn’t bring up that potential subplot (thank God, statutory rape is never funny--I’m looking at you, Adam Sandler), but if they weren’t prepared to go there, they should have just cut Janney’s character, who was pointless anyway, and just made Aykroyd and Sarandon McCarthy’s parents. They should have also got rid of the reference to Sarandon making a pass at Aykroyd, which was just creepy. Did McCarthy and Falcone really imagine audiences laughing at that? 

Nick: It wasn’t a throwaway line we were supposed to laugh at; it’s the reason Sarandon left the family home when Tammy was younger, which is why Tammy didn’t care too much for her grandmother. Though I like how she lives there at the beginning of the film.

Anyways, this film might be the biggest cliche road trip movie. During the film I kept thinking that I had seen these events before: https://www.yahoo.com/movies/road-trip-movie-cliches-tropes-91062943242.html

I’m happy someone else did the work because I don’t want to give too much time to Tammy. 

Dustin: I actually dozed off in this movie. Granted, I saw a late show, but I don’t think that’s why. I had a long day at work yesterday, then attended a two-hour night class. When I got home, I watched Matewan, which I had rented on DVD. It’s an hour longer than Tammy, but I was engrossed the whole time and had no trouble staying awake. Tammy probably would have made me fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. 

Nick: Tammy feels longer than The Birth of a Nation... Now that’s a panning review! 

Dustin: My biggest complaint about this film is that the trailer sold something different. I laughed a lot in the trailer. Judging from the trailer, I thought Melissa McCarthy would be playing some kind of low-rent outlaw. When she goes on the road with Susan Sarandon, I was thinking of something like a funny version of Thelma & Louise, with Susan Sarandon instead of Geena Davis. I thought there would be more scenes like the fast-food joint robbery. But her character was really kind of a sweet woman, but just on the dumb side. The movie was really pretty tame. The R-rating was for language that could have been cut without missing much.