My Spy Review

March 14, 2020 at 4:05am
By Jason Stettner

This is a rather light and fairly generic sort of comedy. It follows a very awkward large man who goes by JJ (Dave Bautista) that is given one last shot with the CIA. During the mission that is his last straw in order to keep working things take an awkward twist. His operation, ran in part with Bobbi (Kristen Schaal) gets found out by Sophie (Chloe Coleman) who he is supposed to be watching over from afar.

The young girl is rather clever, and pushes him to teach her spy things along with becoming a part of her life in other father figure type ways. This starts a series of events where he bonds with the young girl and her mother. It hits all of the predictable beats for this type of movie, but really plays off the jokes about Bautista being a large presence.

It does provide a couple laughs here or there, but it really is just sort of alright. There’s nothing particularly different here and it’s just something to watch. It’s somewhat just a series of events that take place and then eventually concludes. It’s hard to really dive into, as there wasn’t a whole lot to this film and there wasn’t really anything in it to make it feel like a unique story.

I found Bautista to be good here, he embraces the role and his awkward presentation works. I also thought that Coleman was a highlight with her character. I wish there was more depth to her mother, and to Schaal’s sidekick as well.

It seemed like everything was really underdeveloped just hitting the typical beats you would expect from this sort of movie. It felt like something I’ve seen a number of times before. Visually it was alright, there wasn’t really anything fancy to it taking place in just a few intimate locations.

It did have a minor surprise, but nothing that really altered anything that took place being just a brief diversion. I felt they could have tried to make this feel more distinct as it wasn’t very memorable despite the potential being there in terms of the actor combination that was presented.

The Conclusion

My Spy wasn’t a great movie, I had fun watching it with the movie providing some laughs though overall it likely wouldn’t be something I’d view again. It has some awkward moments and didn’t really try to do anything new. I think that’s my biggest complaint with this one, it just wasn’t at all original.

We’ve seen this setup so many times in the past, and despite the talent at play here there wasn’t anything too creative for them to work from. Some of it came across as a bit awkward in terms of the flow and the secondary back story really didn’t make any sense at all.

I thought they had a great lead who embraced what this was, and some interesting side characters that were undeveloped by the end of it. They just didn’t really have anything new to say, or do with this story. It did give a couple chuckles, but it wasn’t anything too wildly humorous and on the feel good side I wouldn’t say it necessarily hits the mark there either.

My Spy Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening Provided by Elevation Pictures

Rating Overall: 4.5