Review of The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) by Healingtoolbox — 03 Oct 2021

Too unfunny to be a comedy. Too dull to be an action film. The characters are too unlikable to be a 'buddy' movie.

There is nothing to recommend about this film.

This is the second Kate McKinnon buddy comedy I wanted to like--and DISlikedToo unfunny to be a comedy. Too dull to be an action film. The characters are too unlikable to be a 'buddy' movie.

There is nothing to recommend about this film.

This is the second Kate McKinnon buddy comedy I wanted to like--and DISliked mightily. After suffering thru two of these I have a guess what's off. I believe the whole premise is in conflict with the role of women now, since 2001 or perhaps 2012 (such shifts happen gradually). The healthy aspects of women's liberation was NOT to empower women to make and star in Road To... movies ala Hope & Crosby, or character-driven buddy fare like Laurel and Hardy. Those old movies are farce made by men about the farcical world males create, populate and sustain with tired genre tropes. What healthy roles women women's liberated to play? To LEAD in replacing conflict and competition with connection, collaboration and win-win negotiation. The LEAD in replacing war with diplomacy, in business especially. We see women stepping into these new roles very few places yet in pop culture. The clearest examples so far is perhaps the first Gal Godot Wonder Woman movie. In mythological terms that actress and that director demonstrate the new role of women. Wonder Woman aspires to defeat the God of War himself. By the Wonder Woman standard, very capable women playing buffoons, in a world run by buffoonish men, in a buffoonish world, made by men living one sided lives, is a theme more appropriate to the 1930s, 1940s or the era of James Bond parody films. In 2018 or 2021, the premise of this film, is out of step with the exciting directions women are evolving.