Spy

Finally a vehicle that fully realises Melissa McCarthy’s potential. Tammy and Identity Thief were lukewarm affairs at best and while Paul Feig’s The Heat had its moments, it relied too much on Sweary McCarthy to get the laughs, which gets old pretty fast. Even though Spy does fall back on McCarthy in vulgar mode from time to time, Spy is a great mixture of her everywoman and her knack for physical comedy.

Coop (McCarthy) is a CIA agent relegated to the desk to guide secret agent Bradley Fine (Law), whom she harbours feelings for, through the underworld of spy games. When he’s taken out of the game by a haughty Bulgarian arms dealer (Byrne) suspected of hiding a nuclear bomb, Coop is forced into the field for the first time to locate the errant weapon. But CIA agent Rick Ford (Statham) is incensed that he has been passed over for the mission and has gone rogue to conduct his own investigation, tripping Coop up at the worst possible moments...

Its best gag is in the trailer - Law sneezing and shooting the bad guy by mistake - but Spy is a consistent laugh. Rose Byrne takes her ‘rich bitch’ of Bridesmaids and turns it up eleven, Miranda Hart weighs in as the kooky best friend and Allison Janney, playing McCarthy’s boss, is always a delight. Some of the action scenes - especially the plane scenario and the Bourne-esque kitchen fight - are a hoot too with Feig nicely balancing the bullets and the blunders.

But this is McCarthy’s movie and she hasn’t been better, resisting the temptation to go off Feig’s script and ad-lib. Laughs might be Spy’s raison d’etre but underneath it all there’s a pointed comment about how the world chooses to dismiss overweight middle-aged women and in that McCarthy brings unexpected heart to what is essentially a wham-bam action comedy.

There are elements that don’t work. Peter Serafinowicz is an underrated comedy character actor but all he’s asked to do here is to be your quintessential lecherous Italian loverboy, complete with bad accent. Jason Statham tries to have fun sending himself up but it turns out Jason Statham parodying Jason Statham is just Jason Statham - talk about ending up right back where you started. And Spy falls back on that aggressive McCarthy persona: for ten minutes here it’s f**k this, f**k you, f**k that - it’s not where her strengths are.

Those thinking that there are no more decent gags to be had in spoofing the spy action movie should give Spy a spin.