Susan, act!

New comedy Spy has a standard beginning: an action episode with shooting and chasing, the star of the episode – super agent Bradley Fine, played by perfect Jude Low, later – a title sequence with animated fights to emotional music. But this is a trick of the director.

The agent Fine is nothing without the voice in the disguised headphone – office analyst Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy), who spends her working day developing optimal routes for the agents in a basement, which swarms with mice, and no matter what the FBI does it is unable to exterminate them.

Susan is a middle-aged lady with ample curves. When she came to the department, she hoped to get an interesting job full of adrenaline. Instead she gets stuck among mice and clerks like her. She has neither private life, nor prospects of career growth. This situation remains unchanged till the moment when all of a sudden all smart and strong agents fail, and the FBI has to send a new person to accomplish a dangerous task.

Paul Feig’s film is a parody inversion for the typical blockbuster about James Bond. All recognizable attributes, from the fight in a casino and exotic places of action to special equipment disguised nearly in sanitary pads or pills against diarrhea are present here. But Spy is different in other things: men are shown here mostly as arrogant peacocks, idiots, or thieves. They fail tasks, behave like fools, speak nonsense, and kill everyone without any need. Life would be awful, be it not for clever and strong women. Good girls defeat bad girls and guys, save stupid guys, and for this they get into the paradise of the happy ending.

However, the film contains no hatred against men, because the authors had different intentions.

Over the past 50 years many attempts have been made to create a parody for Bond series, however one shouldn’t forget that Bond was a kind of a parody too; most of the earlier parts have layers of saving irony, and the villains look cosmic rather than terrifying. Over the years the franchise has lost its trademark easiness and has been overgrown with banalities, with the main one being (like in any movie about spies) in exaggerated masculinity which was hardly challenged by anyone. Feig made an attempt, and it is partially successful.

Actresses with ample curves by definition are meant for comedy roles, but Mellissa McCarthy (who has also played brilliantly in Bridesmaids by the same director) captivates with her bright talent and ability to fight and make laugh alike with the same convincing fashion; she hits her enemy with her fist and with her no less dangerous sharp tongue. This is the groundwork of the film, for the beginning of the film is hardly entertaining: all jokes come from the standard set of the Hollywood humor about sex and feces – but things improve when Susan-Melissa finally gets hold of the situation. I never thought I would see anything funny with participation of Verka Serdiuchka, but even the episode when her concert gets crashed (incidentally, I wonder to which extent Feig inserts in the film this character of a pretend woman, unreal overweighed woman) fades in the background of the Spy’s eloquence. The stream of virtuoso swearing produced by this Plisetskaya of foul language is captivating, when you also recall her movements, rich face expressions, and the ability to make everyone laugh in any situation.

The rest of the lineup blends in as well: Miranda Hart as the heroine’s friend and Rose Byrne as the villain are equally charmingly absurd. I was especially surprised by Jason Statham. He is able to ruin any film with a serious plot, but here he successfully makes fun of himself, being the embodiment of an initiative idiot, a person who is known to be much more dangerous than just an idiot.

Spy is not a big movie of course. But it meets the expectations: a comedy about spies, which is funny at times, and again, this is a long-expected female reply to Bond.

Will the authors be able to make a sequel (and they apparently plan to) that will be even funnier than the first part? Probably. The well of cliches of spy cinema mania is deep enough.