j* movie reviews 2020

My Spy (2020)

A funky Dad-n-Daughter spy bonding experience.

When there was all the Ghostbusters (2016) banging on from grown men concerned about the ruination of their childhood one thing stood out as glorious: Dads of daughters prepared to speak out. I get the goosebumps thinking about them. For every two whinging, entitled dude-bro reviews, I feel I saw at least one "Shut it, my kids a girl and she loves the hell out of the new film." I was buoyed muchly by Dads who both reported in and stood up for the joy they felt watching their daughters identify as strongly with the 2016 characters as they remember identifying with the... well like those ancient history 80s ones.

Anyway, that might feel like digression but I guarantee it's important context. This film, My Spy is a piece of Dads-n-daughters perfection. Which is not to say there's nothing there for Mums-n-sons... there's umm... plenty of Bautista for the Mums, if that's what they're into. And most kids love spies and the idea of being spies, it's a kid thing, not a boy or girl thing.

Whilst we have a long tradition of big tough action actors doing a "kiddy" film, they mostly focus fully on "tough guy is fish out water in care-role" for their laughs. This one is quite different in that it's "punky girl blackmails agent into teaching her spycraft." And it is a thing of glory. JJ (Dave Bautista) is your standard, military hardened spy-type, who may or may not be stuffing things up. So he's assigned to watch a Mum and daughter who might be a risk from a big-bad uncle. The daughter, Sophie (Chloe Coleman - amazing!) finds him spying and proceeds to demand... well everything and anything. And she gets it too.

There's some nice extra tension here around the fact that JJ teaches the kid everything, but won't teach his techy-sidekick Bobbi (Kristen Schaal) the same useful stuff. And this kinda comes home to roost in the more climactic scenes.

There are hilarious scenes when JJ describes killing bad men infront of a judgey audience of middle-schoolers and their parents... there is this epic scene involving a turtledove - I laughed so much. The slow burn romance between Sophie's Mum and JJ also has a range of hilarious moments. There is a twist I legit did not see coming even as it started unfolding - I don't know if I just didn't expect a kids film would pull that kind of thing or what.

The pinacle of this, for me, is the cumulative scenes with JJ teaching Sophie, by demand, how to walk slowly infront of explosions. This starts small, and by the end of the film is so hilarious I was both pissing myself and screaming in teary laughter. And ultimately, that's the kind of film this is. It's a cute PG spy thriller that effectively introduces kids to all the excellence of a solid action movie through a kid participant. For the adults it has pull because the adult characters are "real" but hilarious - it's not as odd as one of those purely kids-are-spies type films. And any film that is such a funny and clever advocate for action is cool by me.

J* gives it 4 stars.