The Spy Who Dumped Me Review

The Spy Who Dumped Me is latest spy-comedy to come from Hollywood and sees Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon team up as they get sucked into the world of international espionage.

Audrey Stockton (Kunis) is a constant underachiever whose boyfriend dumped her in a text. In an act of revenge Audrey sets out to burn all his belonging which forces him back to Los Angeles. Drew (Justin Theroux) reveals he is a spy and tasks Audrey to take a trophy to a cafe in Vienna or else the world be would in trouble.

Spy comedies come in many forms, from the balls-to-walls stylised action in the form the Kingsman series, satires like the Austin Powers series and the attempted rom-com This Means War which forgot it was meant to be an action film. The Spy Who Dumped Me is miles ahead of something like This Means War which is a step in the right direction.

The Spy Who Dumped Me is Susanna Fogel’s second feature as a director and she has potential for blockbuster filmmaking. The most surprising aspect were the action sequences which were well-done and unexpectedly violent. Fogel hired a strong stunt team with Gary Powell (The Bond series) acting as her second-unit director and stunt coordinator. The film started off with a gritty fight and shootout in Vilnius and continues with a chase in Vienna, a rescue mission, and a torture sequence. Blood splattered all over the place and there were violent deaths – it was like something from the ’80s and ’90s and more modern mainstream action films should be like this.

The comedy falls into some of the traps of modern R-rated comedies – excessive swearing and shock humour. Mila Kunis has a mixed record in comedy movies – she was solid in Ted but her role in the Bad Moms movies was basically her swearing. Kunis’ role started off with liberal uses of the f-word and audiences are meant to believe that she is a dull woman who would go unnoticed. But Kunis’ Audrey is the character with the biggest character arc, from being someone who plays it safe to actually having some excitement in her life and live up to her potential.

Kate McKinnon had to do most of the comedic heavy lifting and she was given free rein to ad-lip her role. Most of the comedy depends on whether you are a fan of her style of comedy and I’m not. There were a few moments that made me smile and chuckle but this is far from vintage comedy. The film also had humour in the form of deadpan reactions – Gillian Anderson did a lot of this in her small role as the head of the intelligence service – and there was a running gag involving a couple of spies from Britain and America, Sebastian (Sam Heughan) and Duffer (Hasan Minhaj) where Duffer finds any reason to mention he went to Harvard.

If you are generous the plot can be described as Hitchcockian – a story where two ordinary women being thrust into a wider conspiracy due to possessing a MacGuffin. The Spy Who Dumped Me shows the thin line between greatness and generic when using this template. The spy plot is not as important as the relationship between Audrey and Morgan and Audrey’s character arc.

The ending of the film was so clichéd that it reminded me of a movie trope that Family Guy has made fun of a few times.

The Spy Who Dumped Me can be described as a date-night movie, something for couples to watch together since there is enough action and female-centric comedy to please both types of audiences.