My Spy (2019)

My Spy review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Dave Bautista can now officially be declared an action icon now that he has taken the rite of passage that all action stars must pass. As with the muscle men before, he too must take on the role of a tough hero emasculated in a film where he will have to come to terms with his feelings and family while also gunning down bad guys. Fear not, tough-guy fanatics! Bautista will still be able to kick ass and will do so in further action pictures. But for now, he must take a little ice skating, fall on his butt, and later get kicked in the nuts. Consider it hazing of sorts.

Bautista plays JJ, a former Special Forces soldier who just can’t get into the swing of being a CIA agent. He tries to put on the accent and play coy, but, well, it’s Bautista. He can’t resist dropping the act and killing everyone in the room, which doesn’t sit well with his superiors (Ken Jeong). Thus, JJ is reduced to surveillance duty on his latest mission, paired up with the enthused hacker agent played by a predictably precocious Kristen Schall. They make an odd couple as the brash tough guy who can’t get used to stakeouts and the patient protege who can’t wait to get some lessons in ass-kicking.

The buddy cop formula soon shifts to the Kindergarten Cop route when their surveillance target happens to be a little girl. The girl is naturally too smart for her school and it doesn’t take long for her to find out her apartment has been bugged. Having recorded the CIA agents in the act, the girl gives JJ a choice: risk being outed as an agent or play her father figure for the next few days. A formula follows. JJ will be held hostage to play along with such silly antics as going ice skating so he can fall on his butt and being invited to parent-teacher conferences where he can intimidate the room. JJ will also fall in love with the girl’s mom because the lore of Kindergarten Cop demands a love interest, of course.

My Spy offers virtually no surprises from this type of picture to which I’m sure the response to such a statement will be “duh.” One can pretty much play cute tough guy bingo to mark down the moment when Bautista will make a silly remark or get kicked in the balls or finally open fire in the explosive climax, guaranteed by the PG-13 rating. To this degree, there’s little to be bitter about. The gags never go full gross or groan-worthy and are even smile-worthy in their moments of charisma. How could I not crack a little bit at the sight of Bautista teaching a little girl about placing plastic explosive with a Play-Doh set? The exchange he has with the jealous Schall about desiring the same training is pretty solid silliness as well.

Where the film starts to lose me was in its action-packed third act that flat-out rips off scenes from previous action pictures. Remember the scene from True Lies where Jamie Lee Curtis drops an automatic weapon down the stairs and ends up killing all the bad guys? That scene is present, complete with slow-motion and surprising kills. The film even drops the pretense of not being referential as in one scene where Bautista battles a bad guy while a propeller plane spins around them. Schall watches from a far and remarks “This looks familiar...All we need are some Nazis.”

My Spy is serviceable at times but often tries to subvert itself more by reference than anything within its writing. Bautista will at one point talk about how certain over-blown spy action is only present in movies, to which this movie will do anyway. If only this picture had the Bautista-sized muscle to question and switch up this formula rather than just dance around it, sometimes pointing out a Mission Impossible or Fast & Furious familiar spots along the way.