A hardened CIA operative finds himself at the mercy of a precocious 9-year-old girl, having been sent undercover to surveil her family.
We’ve seen it all before: a tough-as-nails cop/agent is tasked with a new undercover assignment in which he must surveil a single mother and her kid who have possible ties to the film’s bad guy in the off chance said villain makes contact with them. Told to keep his distance and just observe, unforeseen circumstances force him to make contact with the family, and then he falls for the mother and young kid. Eventually, he has to come clean about who he really is, the single mother accuses him of having no heart and in the end, he proves that he really does love them, after killing all the bad guys of course, and saving their lives.
We saw it with Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop” and Vin Diesel in “The Pacifier,” even John Cena made a movie called “Playing with Fire” where he plays a tough-as-nails firefighter who helps rescue three homeless children from a cabin fire and ends up falling for them. The trailer for a film like “My Spy” gives the entire story away and leaves nothing to the imagination. The action, plot (or lack thereof), character development (joking, there is none), and pretty much everything else that accompanies a story of this ilk, is there to fill in the runtime, and nothing more. In spite of all these negatives, the reason I gave this movie a positive review is solely because of Dave Bautista and his young co-star, Chloe Coleman.
In most films that follow this well-worn narrative, the kid usually ends up being loathsome and obnoxious, leaving you with the desire to see the bad guys take them out, freeing the protagonist and indeed ourselves from having to listen to or see them any more. Here though, Chloe Coleman never once comes across as a nauseating headache, instead, she is smart, intelligent, and resourceful, and is more than a match for Bautista’s secret agent. The comradery between the two is consistently believable and even when Coleman’s Sophie tries to set Bautista’s JJ up with her mother Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley), it never feels forced or contrived, it feels like a logical continuation of Sophie and JJ’s relationship.
The plot revolves around JJ (Bautista), a lone CIA operative who works by himself. After he botches a mission, he is given a seemingly simple one, where he is forced to partner with computer nerd Bobbi (Kristen Schaal) to keep an eye on single mother Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley) and her young daughter Sophie (Chloe Coleman) in Chicago, in case her brother-in-law Marquez (Greg Bryk), who just happens to be a Russian villain seeking plutonium so he can start World War III, tries to contact her about her late husband and any information he might have left behind as the two men worked together. While JJ and Bobbi are holed up in a nearby apartment, Sophie inadvertently discovers them and threatens to out them on social media after recording them on her phone having a top-secret conversation unless they explain what they are doing and let her into their world of undercover work and espionage. JJ reluctantly agrees, thinking he will outsmart the child but she proves to be more of a match for him than he bargained for.
Chloe sets JJ and her mother up on a date and it goes well but Kate is a nurse who works at the local hospital and her shifts take over her personal life and she asks JJ if he wouldn’t mind taking Chloe ice-skating and to school. He hesitantly agrees but over time, finds himself caring for Chloe and watching over her but of course, Marquez turns up, takes Chloe hostage and it is up to JJ to rescue her, save the day, and live happily ever after with Chloe and Kate. The action, what little there is, is uninspiring and Greg Bryk as Marquez, is wasted as an exaggerated caricature of a bad guy, who snarls and growls every chance he gets to remind the audience he is the film’s antagonist. This doesn’t fall squarely on his shoulders though, the blame also lies with writers Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber, and director Peter Segal who never take Marquez seriously, he is a means to an end and that is all. In the end, “My Spy” achieves its solitary goal, to entertain, and watching Dave Bautista and Chloe Coleman interact with each other is priceless. One scene, in particular, has JJ teaching her how to pass a polygraph test but she is way ahead of him and proves just how quickly she can adapt to whatever he throws her way, much to his annoyance, and much to our delight.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime Video Friday, June 26th
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