★★★
“Competence. It’s VASTLY over-rated.”
A breezy yet slightly odd mix of comedy and ultra-violence, this drops Audrey (Kunis) and her gal pal Morgan (McKinnon) into the middle of a spy caper, after Audrey’s boyfriend Drew (Theroux) dumps her, only for Audrey to discover he was a CIA spy. He tells her she must deliver a statuette to a Viennese cafe, or the world will be in great peril. After the peril rapidly arrives, heavily-armed, she and Morgan head off to Europe, with no idea of who they can trust. In hot pursuit – whether for reasons good or bad – are MI6 agent Sebastian Henshaw (Heughan), and the agents of “Highland”, a criminal syndicate also very keen to get their hands on the statuette and what it contains. A whirlwind tour of European cities follows, including Budapest, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.
I’ve rather more time for Kunis than McKinnon; I have previously found a little of the latter’s shtick tends to go a long way e.g. the Ghostbusters reboot, and that’s the case again here. There’s not just much of a character arc for Morgan: she starts the film off being loud and obnoxious, and more or less maintains the same, honking note throughout. Audrey is more restrained, both as a character and in Kunis’s performance, and I found that worked considerably better, to the point the film might have been fine with just her as the lead on her own. Although that might have made the obvious comparisons to Spy all the more apparent. As is, it lacks quite the same level of supporting presence given there by Miranda Hart and Jason Statham.
Surprisingly, it maybe works better as an action film than a comedy, despite Fogel’s almost non-existent work in the area previously. [Some second-unit magic being worked?] Drew and Sebastian do much of the heavy lifting, yet not all of it. In this area, there’s a great car chase, and I enjoyed the supporting role of Ivanna Sakhno as Russian gymnast-assassin Nadejda, as well as Gillian Anderson as Henshaw’s deadpan boss. Nadejda also has one of the drollest comic moments: ordered to assassinate “two dumb American women,” she’s confounded by discovering just how many dumb American women are present in Europe. The hitwoman ends up battling Morgan on a trapeze. Because Morgan went to circus school. As you do. Yeah, the script here will occasionally make you roll your eyes like that.
The end hints at some kind of franchise, which has the potential to be more fun than this origin story, the pair becoming fully-fledged agents on their own, rather than operating in the shadows and under the protection of their male counterparts. There’d be something to be said for a film featuring a pair of spies who simply pretend to be those “dumb American women” for cover purposes, while actually being smart and entirely competent. Such a film likely would need to feature someone else other than McKinnon, however. I’d be perfectly fine with that.
Dir: Susanna Fogel
Star: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan. Justin Theroux