Ay, Spy

SPY (B-minus) - This intermittently amusing spoof is not funny enough to succeed as a comedy and is not clever enough to qualify as a smart takedown of the spook genre.

Melissa McCarthy and writer/director Paul Feig team up again after their success in "The Heat," but what was searingly funny in that earlier film just gets tiring here, as Feig's penchant for penning acidic put-downs and toilet humor provides diminishing returns, sinking this one early. McCarthy and Sandra Bullock were a perfect pair in "The Heat," but in "Spy," McCarthy struggles to bond with a handful of sidekicks and fails to truly click with any of them.

McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a dweeby CIA drone, who works out of a basement office serving as a guide for agents in the field. When her assigned agent, Bradley Fine (whom she crushes on, because he's played by Jude Law), is killed in action, Susan convinces the hard-ass boss, Crocker (an under-utilized Allison Janney), to let her take a crack at the case of a Bulgarian and an Italian scheming to broker the sale of a nuclear weapon to Chechen terrorists. Turns out, Susan has incredible hand-to-hand combat skills, and her computer acumen translates well out in the field.

Feig has a lot of ideas but he doesn't show a good command of them. One running joke has the boss foisting embarrassing undercover personas on Susan, mostly poor, ugly, single women. The dialogue is essentially a barrage of vulgar jibes between characters, so many that they lose their effectiveness as Feig seems obligated to top himself with each one.

The cast is fairly strong but they never gel as a team. Rose Byrne is entertaining as the evil Bulgarian Rayna Boyanov. She gives her all and flashes some great comic chops; but too much of the payoff here is just marveling at how foul-mouthed an actress like Byrne can be. Jason Statham milks laughs from his role as a boastful, crazy agent who has gone off the grid and keeps showing up at inopportune times. I've never seen one of his movies, so I assume he is spoofing his typical hero roles. Bobby Cannavale is wasted as the Italian bad guy, and Janney has been much better in her other comic roles (hell, she's funnier in the sitcom "Mom" than she is here).

A couple of minor players do their best with one-note roles. Miranda Hart mugs and spouts a British accent as Susan's fellow CIA dork, Nancy, a bumbling beanpole. Character actor Peter Serafinowicz lusts after Cooper as Aldo, another simple-minded Italian with a severe breast obsession. Beauties Nargis Fakhri and Morena Baccarin ("Homeland") are used as mere props, as is Fifty Cent in a cliched cameo during the movie's climax. And as for the narrative, the big third-act twist is telegraphed early on and comes as no surprise at all.

One hour in (at the halfway mark), "Spy" teeters on the edge of failure. It's to McCarthy's credit that she is compelling an enough entertainer to keep you tuned in. She and Byrne occasionally show flashes of the connection that McCarthy had in spades with Bullock in "The Heat." And there's no denying that Feig can spin some sharply funny quotes for his cast.

But too often the relentless digs between characters are just a mouthful of naughty words. "What a stupid fucking retarded toast," Rayna sneers at Susan. Rayna wonders aloud whether Nancy is employed merely because she's tall enough to reach things on the top cupboard shelf. Rayna also refers to Nancy as an "asthmatic Big Bird." When Susan uses the pseudonym Amber Valentine, Rayna cracks, "What are you, a porn star?" Clunk.

And too many of the jokes are just too easy.  Nancy's tall! Rayna has big hair! Both men and women are enamored of Jude Law's bedroom eyes. Janney spews the neologism "thundercunt." Yuk-yuk. One female baddie takes a frying pan to the crotch. Feig dresses Statham's undercover character in a newsboy cap just so that Nancy can remark wittily, "He looks like he's in the cast of 'Newsies'!" I lost count of the times a character had someone's crotch or ass in their face, and there are more references to bodily functions than you'd find at a Cub Scout retreat.

The bulk of Feig's humor involves characters endlessly mocking each others' looks. He had the audacity, in "The Heat," to roll out a series of albino jokes. Some certainly are funny; I admit audibly snorting when Rayna is accused of dressing like "a sexy dolphin trainer."

But the overall tone of the movie can be troubling. As much as Feig (who also made "Bridesmaids") is credited with opening avenues for female comedians, his world view is markedly misogynist. Here, Susan and Nancy act like giddy schoolgirls when a cute guy pays attention to them. No woman is complete unless she has a man who finds her attractive. Feig tries to mask that by conveying some deep female bonding, but that one trick is little more than a get-out-of-jail-free card.

But, then, it's not fair to review a comedy by taking its lines out of context and deadening them on the page. "Spy" might wear better during its inevitable wall-to-wall showings on cable a few months from now; a 10-minute snippet here and there might hit the spot. But on this first viewing, the two-hour assault on the senses is too often a mess and a chore.