The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

You know when the CIA ruins your romantic life? Relatable right?!

The Spy Who Dumped Me follows Audrey (Mila Kunis), a young woman who's boyfriend, Drew (Justin Theroux), who is secretly a spy, has recently broken up with her with via text. Unfortunately for her and her best friend Morgan (Kate McKinnon), they are now being pursued across Europe by the CIA and the Russian Mafia.

There are many different examples of films that approach the Spy genre with a comedic twist, be them more British slapstick like Johnny English, or more action packed like Central Intelligence, there are plenty of different angles to approach spoofing Spy films, but The Spy Who Dumped Me takes the reoccurring "Not a spy so I don't know what I'm doing" character and doesn't pair them up with a professional, instead now there's two of them and it's even more hilarious because instead of being told a bunch of secret agent lingo when we don't know what's going on, we just have to stick with Audrey and Morgan, guess our way through and assume the calamity that ensues is just regular circumstance.

Kate McKinnon does a fantastic job of carrying the comedy. Morgan is a perfect example of a regular British television character; The quirky best friend. Which in most instances results in some near-insane person dressed in bright colours and dungarees. However, even with McKinnon's random outbursts hilariously making fun of the Spy genre, I think the comedy could've landed a lot more consistently if the jokes focused more on the background of these two "inseparable" friends, instead of trying to force some really confusing joke characters, like the Russian assassin/gymnast/model person. Some of the funniest moments of the film had Audrey and Morgan referencing their past and hyping each other up, this is supposed to be a buddy movie right? This film also uses some more Meta humour in how exposed the two girls are to all the danger, to which they then reference cliche's and tropes from the genre itself. A perfect example of this is when Audrey and Morgan first meet Wendy (Gillian Anderson), the supposed Head of the CIA and Morgan claims that she is "the boss and has not sacrificed one ounce of femininity", obviously referencing characters like M from the James Bond franchise.

There are some more apparent downfalls though. For all the comedy injected by McKinnon, the sub-plots and little romantic moments involving Kunis, Theroux and the new handsome Spy, Sebastian (Sam Heughan) all kill the momentum of the film and just revert a thrilling, hilarious action-comedy to an honestly boring romance story that didn't need to be there. If they wanted to push more drama into the story, which I think is completely unnecessary, they could've just tested the relationship between the protagonists, creating situations that attempt to jeopardise their friendship but only prove to strengthen it.

All-in-all, The Spy Who Dumped Me provides another chapter in the Spy-Spoof genre but it presents a lot more opportunities for growth within the genre, unfortunately without already perfecting those or even providing a consistently great example but they've definitely given the creative community an idea to work with.

3.5/5 - Kate McKinnon interrupts a romantic-comedy with "Antics".