My Spy **
Dir: Peter Segal. With: Dave Bautista, Chloe
Coleman, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Kristen Schaal. 99 mins. Cert: 12A.
Here is a genially mediocre throwback to what
has always been a rite-of-passage for the American cinema’s frontline action
men: the meathead-softener, in which a musclebound star demonstrates how good
he is with kids, the better to establish a pension fund of pocket money that
may come in useful when their knees finally give out. Stomping along in the
heavy-set and highly profitable footsteps of Arnie in Kindergarten Cop,
Hulk Hogan in Suburban Commando and practically The Rock’s entire
filmography, we now find erstwhile galaxy-guardian Dave Bautista, cast here as
a rough-edged CIA ass-kicker handed the last-chance assignment of babysitting
tack-sharp, fatherless tween Chloe Coleman.
The ideal viewer would, like Coleman, be
anyone too young to have suffered Vin Diesel in The Pacifier;
accompanying adults will go largely unsurprised, maybe mildly diverted. After
raising a 12A-rated terror threat, writers Jon and Erich Hoeber pause for an
hour so our guy can bond with the moppet and her mom (Parisa Fitz-Henley),
whose panicky plumbing blunders are a retrograde nudge that she really requires
a man about the house. Journeyman director Peter Segal contributes a few spoofy
gags that would have slotted into his Naked Gun threequel of 1994, but
the most Nineties element is Dominic Lewis’s score, insistently demarcating
schtick “heartwarming” or “comic”, however lame the latter gets. (And Dancing
Dave is pretty lame.)
Gruff, roundheaded, not unlike a jacked Phil Collins, Bautista remains amiable company, although he seems bemused at having to take dodgeballs to the face this early in his movie career, and perhaps by the mixed messaging. After doing all formulaic fluff like this can to persuade us America needs tough guys to watch over its young, My Spy climaxes with a group effort to repel its nondescript Eurovillains, then a polite request for equal pay. Lowish-level titters ensue – mostly care of Kristen Schaal, very much doing the Kristen Schaal thing as Dave’s tech aide – while an analogue finale on a scrappy-looking airfield offers passing respite from the multiplex’s usual VFX-bloated citysmashing. Still, I wouldn’t risk contracting the Coronavirus for the rest of it.
My Spy opens in cinemas nationwide today. But let's be careful out there.
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