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The Spy Who Dumped Me
***
Dir: Susanna Fogel
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon
(USA, 15 1hr 56mins)
Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon team up in this comedy about a pair of best friends thrown into a James Bondian world of international assassins and espionage. Kunis, no stranger to big-budget comedy following Ted and the Bad Moms films, plays Audrey, a woman in a dead-end job who has just been dumped by her boyfriend.
McKinnon, the best thing in most things she’s in and superb on Saturday Night Live, is the supportive best friend nursing her through the break-up. Matters soon change however when Kunis discovers her ex, played by Justin Theroux, is in fact a CIA agent. Deadly assassins are on his trail and after a shoot out in their apartment the two women take charge of his mission, heading for Europe with the baddies now on their tails too. Perhaps aiding them is suspicious but charming British agent Sam Heughan, whilst blonde haired sniper Ivanna Sakhno and other ne’er do wells give chase, peppering the comedy with some well-staged action sequences as McKinnon and Kunis discover their inner spies.
Gillian Anderson cameos as a spy boss and adds some gravitas to the mayhem as ‘the Beyonce of the government’, on whom McKinnon declares a girl crush. This is really all about the slapstick, comedic interplay between the two female leads however. Kunis and McKinnon work well together, bantering with improvisational glee throughout.
Director Fogel mostly curbs the central pair in the right places, but there are some obvious overstretched improvisational moments, a crime many American comedies are guilty of at present. Likeable and fun with a winning central pairing, The Spy Who Dumped Me has many obvious predecessors but offers enough of a spin on the fish out of water/secret agent set up to reap rewards.
Opens August 22