Spy: The Funniest Movie Of 2015 (so far)

Rick Ford: You really think you’re ready for the field? I once used defibrillators on myself. I put shards of glass in my eye. I’ve jumped from a high-rise building using only a raincoat as a parachute and broke both legs upon landing; I still had to pretend I was in a Cirque du Soleil show! I’ve swallowed enough microchips and shit them back out again to make a computer. This arm has been ripped off completely and re-attached with arm.

Susan Cooper: I don’t know that that’s possible… I mean medically…

Rick Ford: During the threat of an assassination attempt, I appeared convincingly in front of congress as Barack Obama.

Susan Cooper: In black-face? That’s not appropriate.

Rick Ford: I watched the woman I love get tossed from a plane and hit by another plane mid-air. I drove a car off a freeway on top of a train while it was on fire. Not the car, *I* was on fire.

Susan Cooper: Jesus, you’re intense.

Spy is so funny you will need to watch it several times to catch all the jokes. While you are laughing at one joke another three go by and you end up missing some gems.For instance, I have no clue what happened after this dialogue exchange between Melissa McCarthy and Rose Byrne because I was laughing so hard.

Rayna Boyanov: My father used to bring people like you here.

Susan Cooper: Did he also make you dress like a slutty dolphin trainer?

I’m not sure if that line was improv’d or if they made that dress because somebody wrote that joke.

There are so many funny characters and moments you wonder how director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) was able to pull it all off. In one film Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jason Statham, Allison Janney, Jude Law, Jessica Chaffin, Miranda Hart, Curtis Jackson, Will Yun Lee, Bobby Cannavale, Julian Miller, Peter Sarafinowicz, Michael McDonald and Bjorn Gustafsson all have their moments and practically steal the show.

I love seeing Melissa McCarthy back from the land of Identity Thief and Tammy. Those two films turned her volume up to 11 and ditched all semblance of character. She was loud, lewd, mean and seemingly had no telling her it was a bad idea. She is a very funny person who is at her best when playing capable, smart and foul-mouthed. In Spy she is a badass agent who happens to look like Melissa McCarthy. Her looks get her set up with various cheeky aliases (I look like someone’s homophobic aunt!) but they all fit the mission and are not jokes aimed at her. Much like in Bridesmaids her character has three-dimensions and keeps surprising us at every corner. The clip below is a perfect example of McCarthy’s character and her surprises NSFW

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Spy tells the story of Agent Susan Cooper (McCarthy) going undercover to infiltrate a nuclear arms deal.  She gets the job because all of the other agents identities have been compromised and she is the only person that cannot be recognized. After some initial annoyance (Statham wants to use fake face/off machine) she is finally able to break free from the CIA surveillance basement that was loaded with rats, bats and cake with rat poop on it and get some actual field work. The mission takes her all over the world, gets her groped repeatedly and puts her in the insult crossfires of a woman named Rayna Boyanov (Byrne) NSFW

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It is all fodder for funny people to come in and make you laugh. The film shoots around from Paris to Budapest and plays like a spy film on redbull. There are double crosses, triple crosses, lots of death, copious profanity and Jason Statham saying this:

Nothing kills me. I’m immune to 179 different types of poison. I know because I ingested them all at once when I was deep undercover in an underground poison-ingesting crime ring.

I never thought I’d see the day where Jason Statham plays a bumbling dork. In Spy he is angry that McCarthy got the mission so he goes rogue and basically makes more work for her. He is oblivious to the fact that all the bad guys know his face and he keeps showing up at the worst times with the worst wigs and somehow fails his way out of each situation. It is a blast to watch Statham have fun and his back and forth with McCarthy is pure gold.

Rick Ford: You’re going to ruin this mission.

Susan Cooper: No, you’re going to ruin this mission.

Rick Ford: No, you are.

Susan Cooper: No, you’re going to!

Rick Ford: You… times infinity!

The action in Spy is pretty fantastic as well. It keeps the surprises coming and establishes McCarthy as a resourceful badass in the vein of Jason Bourne. Planes are crashed, cars are wrecked and there is a excellently choreographed kitchen fight that is better than it has any right to be. Also, as the action builds so does the humor. No character is safe from a one-liner (your hair broke your fall) and just when they seem to have the day won they accidentally shoot somebody in the face because of allergies.

Spy is another win for Paul Feig and I can’t wait to see what he does next. I’d love to see a Spy sequel if Feig directs again because I want to spend more time with the characters. I could sit for hours watching Jason Statham get tricked by his coworkers while McCarthy is somewhere kicking butt.