Review: The Spy Who Dumped Me

I’ve not been to Hell before, but I can only imagine The Spy Who Dumped Me and the viewing experience I had is a close enough representation of the seven rings of Hell. Garnering my personal award for worst movie of 2018, it’s no surprise that the Kunis/McKinnon action-comedy is horrendous.  

Much like its contemporaries, genre-mockery and similar films that are based on the overdone premise never do all that well. Submerging itself in Scary Movie tier levels of bad, The Spy Who Dumped Me hasn’t got a single merit that could ever redeem it as either a comedy or just a movie. By all means, is its worst trait the script. Filled to the brim with cheap digs at the action genre, the expected subversion of male stereotypes through the sheer “brilliance” of the leading ladies.  

Kunis and McKinnon haven’t exactly landed on their feet in recent years. I can’t really think of anything Kunis has done since Ted, and McKinnon got off on the wrong foot with her abysmal performance in Ghostbusters. The two here have minimal chemistry and it’s no fault of their own as the two have some abysmal writing to work with the whole way through. As cliché’d as you’d expect with the tropes of the spy genre subverted but religiously followed at the same time. It’s again the problem of how the film showcases it’s “not like every other spy-comedy”, in turn becoming the exact same as every other spy-comedy out there. 

What irks me most is the horrific pacing and direction. Some scenes are horrifically drawn out, others aren’t given enough time to develop themselves fully or flesh out the film. Justin Theroux’s “Drew” is seemingly killed off and it takes a good eight seconds for Kunis and McKinnon to get over this. They tally up an impressive kill count, and rather than have the two develop from everyday citizens into hardened assassins, the movie skips over what could’ve been the most interesting aspect of all.  

Are there any funny jokes throughout this? No, to be quite honest. There’s an overlying feeling that the movie is trying to be Kingsman but misses all the marks that made that movie so interesting and different. No Colin Firth for a start, so what’s really the point? Without a single funny joke, it’s difficult to rate a comedy higher than the most minimal of marks. 

A grim, relentlessly dull and borderline redundant movie with no real merit whatsoever. It’s like watching two once A-list actors try and keep their profile alive, while at the same time drowning in pitifully awful action sequences and the occasional awkward one-liner. While I’d not expected much from a 2018 comedy, I didn’t think it could be quite this horrific. As painful as having your teeth knocked out with a cement frisbee, but nowhere near as endearing or funny.