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*SPOILER ALERT*
Melissa McCarthy may be my favourite human in the world…
I had an impromptu cinema date last night to see Spy, the latest film by Paul Feig who wrote Bridesmaids and The Heat. I was expecting big things, which were delivered to me in a delightful package with an Allison Janney-shaped supporting-actress bow on top (I love Allison Janney – more on her in a minute).
The movie sees Susan Cooper (McCarthy), a CIA agent who gives up her role as a desk jockey to go undercover to locate a nuclear weapon that is being sold to terrorists by the practically-perfect-in-every-way Rayna Boyanov, played by Rose Byrne. Now Rose Byrne is in a completely different league for me. She’s flawless in everything that she does, and I’ll always rave about her for literally any movie she’s ever in because I FRICKIN’ LOVE HER!
In this movie she plays a super bitchy and spoilt arms dealer who tells McCarthy’s character that she’s wearing ‘an abortion of a dress’ and reminds her of a sad Hungarian clown woman which had me howling with laughter far longer than anyone else in the cinema did – so you get the idea of what she’s like.
The first thing that I really need to scream about is the scripting of this movie. The quality of the dialogue was something I was consciously aware of and couldn’t stop laughing at the whole way through. I can tell that Melissa McCarthy had a lot of improv lines added because who else could tell someone that they’ll ‘cut off their dick and glue it to their forehead so they look like a limp-dick unicorn’ and then laugh at them because they’re crying? Honestly! That was one of the more tame lines she comes out with after she gives up the good girl act half way through the movie and starts giving me LIFE!
She also tells Rayna, whilst she’s on the receiving end of a monologue about her father, that she’s dressed like a slutty dolphin trainer, which was absurdly and belly-laughingly accurate, and the line that stuck with me so much that I’ve been reciting it in my head since yesterday and giggling to myself.
The casting of this movie was brilliant too. Jude Law, or as my date kept calling him Daniel Craig, is wonderful as the charismatic super spy who does the leg work whilst McCarthy directs him through an earpiece. He appears alongside Jason Statham as the rule-breaking British agent who thinks Cooper is out of her depth. Then Allison Janney stars as the head of the CIA, with her perfect comedic timing even when she isn’t in her usual slapstick comedy role – I just love her.
Finally we had comedian Miranda Hart who I never in a million years would have expected to be in such a big budget movie with a renowned cast, but she was great and totally held her own! I even discovered while writing this that the part was written specifically for her, which is awesome! Serving us Brits proud whilst Statham is being a knob round the back. She has all of the one-liners and even dabbles with 50 Cent, the lucky thing! This power cast, along with a host of the usual SNL group comedians and actors made for a truly hysterically funny movie! Bravo!
Visual effects were also outstanding. One scene that made me recoil in horror whilst still loving every second of it was a fight scene in a kitchen with pots and pans and a knife that goes through someone’s hand in slow motion. It was brilliant! I couldn’t take my eyes off it and I had a huge grin on my face too. There’s even vomit that goes all over a dead guy and I loved that too!
The movie was well paced, it didn’t drag, it stayed consistently funny, it continually gripped me and had me thinking about the next twist and questioning who I could trust and who was going to be recklessly killed next. The whole thing was a masterpiece.
As far as spy movies go, ignoring that it was a comedy movie as well, it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. Gadgets, double agents, villains with European accents that you can’t place, it had them all! I’m definitely going to go seeing it again. Just fingers crossed I won’t be sat in front of a really loud couple, the girl of which who kept shouting, ‘What the fuck?!’ at every twist in the movie. I swear she almost got a knife through her hand too…
