THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME (2018) *

Mila Kunis stars as a woman who gets dumped by her boyfriend (Justin Theroux) who just so happens to be a spy… if you already didn’t infer that from the title.  After he is killed, she comes into possession of a flash drive that several interested parties want for themselves.  It’s then up to Mila and her goofball gal pal (Kate McKinnon) to avoid a bevy of hired assassins and enemy agents to return the info to her ex’s boss (Gillian Anderson). 

The Spy Who Dumped Me has a sitcom premise and a one-joke set-up.  Even then, there aren’t enough laughs to fill a half-hour TV show.  (Heck, there aren’t any laughs to be had at all.)  You would even be pushing it to have a ninety-minute comedy with this sort of plot.  As it stands, the movie clocks in at nearly two hours, much of which is filled with unfunny situations and desperate gags.  Many scenes are needlessly dragged out way too long and don’t really forward the plot.  It sometimes almost feels like you’re watching an assembly cut where every blessed thing that was shot was tossed in there without any consideration whatsoever.    

I usually enjoy Kunis’ work, but she is sorely miscast as the everywoman who is suddenly thrust into a world of international intrigue and must go from Plain Jane to Jane Bond.  Even the reliably hilarious McKinnon fails to generate any laughs as Kunis’ bestie who tags along for the ride.  Since she wasn’t given much to work with, she just resorts to a lot of unfunny mugging, which is often painful to sit through.  Theroux is ideally cast as the secret agent, although he isn’t around long enough to leave much of an impression one way or another. 

Maybe the problem is that the action stuff hews closer to the Jason Bourne movies than the James Bond franchise.  I mean there was a spy series that knew how to balance laughs and thrills.  The Bourne-style action scenes don’t mesh at all with the lame humor and McKinnon’s shenanigans, and even when they do introduce some Bond-inspired gadgets, it’s too little, too late.  It would be one thing if the movie swung for the fences and went for gross-out gags the way The Brothers Grimsby did.  Unfortunately, this just feels like The Heat with a license to kill.

AKA:  Bad Spies.