Spies fly off the page and into action, 3.5 readers. BQB here with a review.
At the outset, let me say I give this movie a solid C +. It passed the minimum standards required for me to not demand a ticket refund but it didn’t razzle dazzle me either. It had cute, funny moments but ultimately, I’ll never watch it again and won’t think of it much a year from now. It was made by Apple and had all the earmarks of a streaming movie, so much so that I wondered why I didn’t just wait two weeks until I could stream it in the comfort of my own home.
Sidenote – A couple of weeks ago I noticed the Beekeeper was made by Amazon and this week this movie is made by Apple. Alas, when I was a kid I thought the movie business was out of my reach. If only someone had told me that I just need to learn how to code. Oh well. Moving on.
This is one of those films where the trailer is better than the movie. On paper, the idea is pretty solid. A spy novelist (Bryce Dallas Howard) pens the fabulous adventures of Agent Argyle (Henry Cavill) who, with the help of his handler (John Cena) and tech specialist (Ariana DeBose) fights the evil femme fatale LaGrange (Dua Lipa).
In reality, the novelist’s life is quite bland and mousy indeed. She’s scared of everyone and everything, her only friend her cat Alfie who she takes everywhere in a special backpack with ventilation holes. Alfie is the best part of an otherwise paint by numbers movie.
One day while on a train ride to visit her mother (Catherine O’Hara), novelist Ellie is attacked by mysterious assailants in a scene straight out of one of her bestsellers. Real life undercover spy Aiden (Sam Rockwell) comes to the rescue, and he’s far from the buff, studly, sophisticated Argylle but he gets the job done.
It turns out that Ellie is such a great writer that somehow, she has managed to predict with stunning accuracy in her novels what an actual spy agency is up to in her books, and they want her deep-sixed before she keeps blabbing away to her readers. Far-fetched? Yes. I could go into further detail but I’d ruin the movie for you and well, it does a good enough job of doing that on its own.
It’s a star studded cast. Samuel L. Jackson and Bryan Cranston stop by. Bryce, daughter of Ron “Opie” Howard, gets a chance to shine in her own vehicle. She does a better job in the first half as a mousy character but falls a little flat when she’s asked to be a bad ass. I’m not sure if it’s her or the written material she was given. Probably the latter.
Cut scenes throughout the first half of the movie refer to Ellie’s spy novels in which Cavill and Cena fight Dua Lipa and I couldn’t help but think how much more awesome the movie would have been if it had just been about Cavill and Cena fighting Dua Lipa than about Bryce Dallas Howard being in trouble for writing about Cavil and Cena fighting Dua Lipa. In true streaming movie fashion, it’s a lot of star power in that everyone was probably paid big bucks to show up for five minutes yet the trailer hoodwinks you into thinking they’ll be a huge part of the movie throughout.
So maybe just skip it and watch the trailer instead. Or wait until it streams on Apple Plus. It’s not a bad movie. It’s just not a good movie. It’s a C Plus movie. If you compare it to a term paper, its not the A plus paper that the honors kid stayed up every night for a month writing. It’s the paper the goof off kid wrote on the bus ride to school ten minutes before it was due. It got the job done but you can’t help but thing there was some wasted potential.
Sidenote. I hate to say this because I’ve whined extensively about my own weight problems on this fine blog, so I’m going to say this in a positive way. Bryce Dallas Howard is pleasantly plump and…you know what? She really isn’t. She just is for movies. She’s normal size for everywhere else. Most women in film, nay, most men in film for that matter, look like they eat three almonds a day and maybe, just maybe, if they’re good, they’re allowed one cup of spinach if they run a five mile marathon after. For example, I bet Dua Lipa only ate three celery sticks last year so she could film that cool scene where John Cena plucks her off her motorcycle that they put in the trailer that makes you want to buy a ticket to this otherwise lackluster film. But the Bryce-meister has a little bit of chub going on which works when she’s mousy novelist Ellie and a little surprising later as she tackles the a tougher kick ass role.
I’m not knocking it. I like curvy babes. It was nice to see a woman on screen who isn’t afraid of a sandwich. And I noticed the female lead in the beekeeper looked like she never shied away from the BK drive-through. There seems to be a trend in Hollywood as of late to put chubby chicks front and center and I applaud it. I’m just saying, where are the fat dudes? Where’s Special Agent Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfeld) chasing down the bad guys? I’m not sure we’ll ever get equal time for portly dudes on screen, but there seems to be a cabal of chubby chicks who are doing a PR offensive to get husky babes on screen. Large dudes need their own PR team. All I’m saying.
Again. I’m fat. I applaud it. To an extent. Don’t get too fat, people. You don’t want the health problems that come with it. Trust me.
But Bryce is far from that. She and her cat are tres adorbs.
STATUS: Moderately shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 