The Spy Who Dumped Me

Dir: Susanna Fogel

2018

**

Comedy Spy films generally suck but I still give them a chance. I quite liked the idea of two best friends being chased by assassins through Europe after one of their ex-boyfriends turns out to be a CIA agent and learning that said best friends would be played by Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon got my attention. I thought, at least the performances would be good, even if the story isn’t. Sadly I was wrong on all fronts. The story is rubbish and the characters misfire at every given moment. I adore Kate McKinnon, and while she was full of energy and did the best she could, there was no getting away from how badly written and annoying her character was. The film has glimmers of greatness but overall its terrible. The film starts with Audrey Stockman (Kunis), a supermarket cashier who spends her birthday upset after being dumped, via text, by her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux). Her best friend and roommate, Morgan (McKinnon), convinces her to burn Drew's things and sends him a text as a heads up. Unbeknownst to Audrey, Drew is a government agent being pursued by men trying to kill him. He promises to return and asks Audrey not to burn his things in the meantime. The next day at work, Audrey flirts with a customer who asks her to walk him to his car. She is then forced into a van. Inside, the man identifies himself as Sebastian Henshaw and states that Drew works for the C.I.A. and has gone missing. Audrey claims not to have heard from Drew and is allowed to go home. However, Drew shows up to retrieve his possessions, including a fantasy football trophy. People begin shooting at them and Drew tells Audrey that, if anything happens to him, she must go to a certain café in Vienna and turn over the trophy to his contact. Drew is then apparently murdered by a man Morgan had previously met at the bar who had stayed the night, who is then pushed off the balcony by Morgan. Morgan convinces Audrey to go to Vienna and, after realising she’s pushed a man to his death, decides to go with her. At the café, Sebastian appears and demands the trophy at gunpoint. Audrey reluctantly hands it over before the entire café is attacked. Audrey and Morgan flee, chased by men on motorcycles. Audrey reveals that she still has Drew's trophy since she switched it with one of several decoys they purchased at the airport. They board a train to Prague and discover that the trophy contains a USB flash drive. Morgan calls her parents, who tell her they can stay in Prague with Roger, a family friend. Audrey and Morgan make it to the apartment, but quickly realize that Roger is actually a spy who has killed the real Roger and drugged the two ladies. Audrey tries to get Morgan to swallow the flash drive. When that fails, Audrey tells their captors that she flushed it down the toilet. The ladies then wake up in an abandoned gymnastics training facility, about to be tortured by Nadejda, a Russian gymnast/model/assassin trained by an older couple who had previously masqueraded as Drew's parents. The couple reveals that Drew was discreetly negotiating with them to sell the flash drive, and Audrey came along as part of his cover. Audrey and Morgan are rescued by Sebastian, who defied orders to save them. He brings them to meet his boss in Paris, where they once again tell the C.I.A. and MI6 that the drive was flushed. The women are given tickets back to America, and Sebastian is placed on leave. As Sebastian drives the women back to the airport, Audrey confesses that she hid the drive in her vagina. When Sebastian is unable to decrypt the information, Morgan calls Edward Snowden - who had a crush on her in summer camp - and he helps them hack the drive. The trio travel to a hostel in Amsterdam, where they are attacked by Sebastian's C.I.A. partner Duffer, who wants to sell the drive himself. They are rescued by their hostel roommate, who thinks they are being robbed and body slams Duffer to his death. Audrey answers Duffer's phone when it rings and agrees to sell the drive at a private party in Berlin. To get into the party, Audrey and Sebastian disguise themselves as the Canadian ambassador and his wife, while Morgan pretends to be a member of Cirque du Soleil, the entertainment. Sebastian is attacked and Morgan is confronted by Nadejda on an acrobat swing, eventually killing her by throwing her onto the nearby set. Meanwhile, Audrey goes to meet her mysterious contact and finds Drew, still alive. Drew acts suspiciously and goes through her purse to find the flash drive. Sebastian arrives, being held hostage by Drew's fake parents. After a standoff, Drew's fake parents are shot, leaving Sebastian and Drew, who accuse each other of trying to hurt Audrey. Drew then shoots Sebastian, and Audrey pretends to be glad before grabbing Drew's gun. After Drew tries to attack Audrey, Audrey kicks him in the crotch, then he falls to the ground when Morgan throws a cannonball at him. Drew is arrested, and Audrey, Morgan, and Sebastian walk away. Sebastian later gives Morgan his untraceable phone so she can call her parents to tell them she is alive. While on the phone, Morgan receives a call from Sebastian's boss telling him he is off suspension. Morgan begs her for a job as a spy. Meanwhile, Sebastian and Audrey share a kiss. A year later, while celebrating Audrey's birthday in Tokyo, her party is revealed to be a ruse. Audrey and Morgan are there on assignment with Sebastian to stop a group of Japanese Yakuza gangsters. The best films of this ilk are the ones that convince an audience that the most outrageous of situations are in fact quite easy to fall into. The Spy Who Dumped Me doesn’t do this. It feels like someone came up with the title first and then tried to create a story around it. Director and co-writer Susanna Fogel said that she wrote the movie with David Iserson because they were "looking for a hole in the marketplace - a good friendship movie with lots of action" but the truth is they wrote something that has been done time and time again. A few years back a taxi driver went to a TV news studio in England and through a series of misunderstandings he found himself being interviewed live on television on a subject he knew nothing about. That was funny and it really happened. In no circumstance can anyone found themselves in a situation where they would have to, or indeed would be able to impersonate a member of the Cirque du Soleil. The truth is Cirque du Soleil is popular at the moment, so they shoehorned a bit of pop-culture into a film even though it didn’t fit, didn’t work and wasn’t funny. The story was feeble and the script was awful. A huge wasted opportunity for an idea that actually had a lot of potential. The three or four punchy scenes just could make up for the overall dreck of what the film was.