Spy (2015)

Before I begin this one, let me give you a little background. I am a huge Jason Statham fan. His movies are not the most high brow, but they are a good kick-ass testosterone fueled escape. So when I seen this movie pop up, and Statham was cast in a comedic role of himself, I was scared. I was afraid this was going to be a complete disaster and break the excellent run of movies. Couple this with the fact that I do not find Melissa McCarthy that particularly funny, my hopes for this being a success was not at all optimistic.

Throw in

Jude Law and

Allison Janney to the mix and you have yourself a heavy weight cast for a 2hr journey and you have a lot of room for this to go completely wrong. However be prepared for this to go completely right.

The movie opens up with McCarthy as the back office support CIA agent who is in the ear of her unrequited field agent (Law) providing help and support. He gets killed in action and long story short, due to the fact the bad guys now have all the active agents, they need to send in an unknown. Yup you guessed it, McCarthy’s time to step from behind the desk to prove herself finally has come.

Forgiving the recycled Mission Impossible story line, the screenplay is punctured with extremely funny setups and witty one-liners. British comedian,

Miranda Hart has her first big-screen outing and she does not do herself any dishonor delivering her lines with the comedic timing that she is well versed in doing in her self-titled BBC sitcom.

The real runaway star of this movie is our boy Statham. Who knew he had such wit and self-deprecating humor within his range? He completely sends himself up and has some of the best set pieces, including a beautiful scene where he explains why even though he is British, he fights for Uncle Sam.

The movie has been a resounding runaway success for the bean counters. With an initial $65M budget it has already taken $235M in the first few months of opening. I only hope they don’t think there is a sequel in the works, because this would be a shame to try and strike oil twice. It was a daring outing from the start, so don’t push it.

On the whole the movie is family viewing except for a couple of scenes – one particularly one featuring ‘dick pics’ which is handled extremely well. Absolutely hilarious.

If you were sitting on the fence hoping not to see our boy Statham make a fool of himself, then get off that fence. I am telling you to watch this and enjoy a good evening of laughter.