Review of The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) by Davrosdaleks1 — 02 Aug 2018

Legitimately funny movie, but be prepared to watch it more for the jokes than the plot.

In the first ten minutes, I had my doubts. The characters and jokes appeared obvious and tired. (Plus, the movie has one of those relationships where you have two attractive actors, but somehow Justin Theroux’s character is considered out of Mila Kunis’ character’s league.) However, when the spy stuff starts and Kunis and Kate McKinnon are whisked out of their everyday lives, things get really funny.

There is a lot of great comedy to be mined here from having the characters go from one insane situation to the next. There is some shockingly, surprising stuff in here. The theater audience laughed quite a lot. The action is delightfully violent and over-the-top.

Good cast overall, but the MVPs are Hasan Minhaj and Ivanna Sakhno. Minhaj is delightfully douchey as a CIA agent who can’t stop mentioning that he went to Harvard. Sakhno is the assassin trailing them and she kills it, no pun intended. She plays the role entirely seriously as she plays the kind-of-odd and completely dangerous pursuer.

As much as I liked this movie, it could have been a little shorter. It tries to be an over-the-top R-rated comedy and a BFF-road trip of discovery, and it never quite balances perfectly. It’s not that I disagree with the character work, plus Kunis and McKinnon have great chemistry together, but they didn’t need to spend so much time on it. Those scenes just slow things down. Plus, the film also gives McKinnon’s character more comic screen time than needed, and it feels too indulgent.