Spy

The star of this film is the supersized Melissa McCarthy, whom you may remember from the irritatingly crude and scatological Bridesmaids, which everyone seemed to love except me. One of her co-stars is Miranda Hart, whose TV show everyone finds hilarious except me. And the writer/director of Spy is Paul Feig, also responsible for Bridesmaids.

So, not good omens, then. But never prejudge, because all of them do an excellent job in this always entertaining, sometimes hilarious James Bond spoof. Yes, the dialogue is liberally splattered with profanities, but that’s Feig’s way as a writer, and anyway, for the most part they simply add to the fun.

McCarthy is an office-bound agent at CIA headquarters whose task is to act as the eyes and ears of super-agent Jude Law, whom she secretly loves, when he’s on an assignment. Law, by the way, is a splendidly smooth, not to say oily pseudo-Bond, but one day, when he’s on the track of a nuke in a suitcase destined to blow up New York, he is killed by gorgeous Bulgarian villainess Rose Byrne (another Bridesmaids veteran).

And since Byrne appears to know the identities of all the CIA’s regular agents and would happily kill every one, the unknown McCarthy volunteers to go to Paris, then Rome, then Budapest to complete Law’s mission. And her boss, the acerbic Allison Janney, agrees.

Thus the pattern is established: Spy goes to the kind of places that Bond habituates, and there McCarthy experiences all the action and stunts that make up Bond’s day. Car chases? Check. Aircraft spinning out of control? Check. Gunfights? Check. Martial arts? Check. In this movie the action isn’t over till the fat lady fights.

But, of course, not everything goes smoothly. McCarthy’s gawky English friend and fellow low-grade agent, Hart, acts for her as she had acted for Law, but meanwhile another, belligerent but thick CIA man, Jason Statham, is so incensed that McCarthy has been chosen instead of him that he resigns.

Nevertheless, on his own time and initiative, he follows her around and keeps messing up her assignment. And the deadpan way in which Statham proceeds to send up his own cinematic hard-man image is beautifully done.

So, as the action proceeds there is much to enjoy – a neat twist in the plot towards the end, glamorous settings, attractive villains and even a randy Italian, Peter Serafinowicz, obsessed with McCarthy’s breasts. And that’s only fair, because if Bond (and here Law is an ersatz Bond) can have lusty admirers, why shouldn’t his female equivalent?

You could take this whole story and play it straight with Daniel Craig as 007 and it would work. Here, happily, it works equally well as comedy. One or two scenes could do with trimming, but that’s a minor quibble. The cast is first-rate, with McCarthy, a gifted comic actress, so good that I’m even prepared to forgive her for being associated with Bridesmaids.