True story: all Hollywood tough guy action stars are required (by law) to star in a movie with cute little kids. What else could possibly explain why Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Hulk Hogan, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, John Cena, and Vin Diesel have all made the same movie (sometimes twice). And now it’s time to through the motions again in the new movie My Spy. This time with Dave Bautista as the tough guy.
For the record, this was going to be released theatrically but got delayed when Bautista’s other comedy (Stuber) flamed out badly last year in the halcyon days of 2019. Then with Covid-19 raging and probably not a lot of hope for the film’s prospects, it wound up getting sold to Amazon. So if you have Amazon Prime, it’s a free streaming movie right now.
The plot of such movies doesn’t matter a great deal… in this one, Bautista plays a spy (who is very bad at his job) who has to monitor a mom and her cute little girl because her brother-in-law is an international terrorist. The little girl is wise to him and quickly blackmails him into teaching her spy craft (you know, like walking away from explosions in slow-mo). And hearts are melted and everyone says “awww” and whatnot.
Only thing this movie has going for it is that the script and the characters are all aware of not only action movie cliches but tough guy/cute kid movie cliches. They make multiple references to the situations or events in the movie as they are happening and that’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, it also means that the movie is still full of cliches, regardless of whether or not the movie is joking about it. Because there’s nothing unique or interesting about this flick.
I suppose, to be charitable and 50% less of a monster, I’ll acknowledge the little girl (played by Chloe Colman) does a good job of playing cute and street smart. And nothing particularly right or wrong about Bautista’s performance… he doesn’t do much beyond being game for playing his tough guy act as a little silly.
But the movie just bored me. I mean, there’s no sense in trying to pretend the bad guy and the MacGuffin really matter. This is meant to be a tough guy/cute kid light comedy… but, as such, I just didn’t laugh very much. There were a few gags here and there that worked because they stretch the definition of PG-13 a little… but otherwise, it’s just generic and the cast, who do try, just aren’t given enough to do.
So I’d skip it unless, I suppose, you are a sucker for this sub-genre or have a weird love of Dave Bautista. It’s not the worst of its class of movies but when I can honestly say the pretty juvenile and silly John Cena tough guy/cute kid movie was somehow better, that’s a bad sign (that movie was a frivolous piece of children’s silliness but it played into that more directly).
Score: 60