For one scene, director Susanna Fogel (Life Partners) totally nails the buddy comedy at the heart of The Spy Who Dumped Me. As the movie enters its final act and its characters have spent much of their time improbably fumbling their way through the moderately expensive set pieces of international espionage, Morgan (Kate McKinnon) tells Audrey (Mila Kunis) in so many words that, despite the life-threatening insanity of the previous week, it was great to experience it with her best friend at her side. It’s a surprisingly real (albeit in a greeting card kind of way) moment in what by all rights should be just another throwaway August release. The movie doesn’t handle its spy elements as well as its fish-out-of-water characters, but what do you expect for late summer?
Drew (Justin Theroux) is the dumping spy, who as the film opens is in Budapest pursued by violent Eastern European extras who know he has something they want. Cut to America, where Audrey is less than happy on her birthday, despite Morgan’s best efforts to cheer her up and set her up with a Ukranian stud. You see, Drew has just unceremoniously broken up with Audrey via text message. To help her friend move on, Morgan insists that they burn everything he left behind and text Drew to let him know about it. Unfortunately for Drew, the attempted bonfire happens to include the very thing that dozens of quickly dispatched Hungarian-type actors want from him. The spy runs home, where, just before he’s killed by rival forces, he asks Audrey to deliver a package to a contact in Vienna, Austria.
And so the jet-setting adventure begins, but not without a curious structural choice for a summer spy parody. Audrey flashes back to her previous birthday, where she met Drew at a bar, chatting over the jukebox and arguing over what was the worst song they could play. The Spy regularly cuts back to that meet-sorta-cute, filling in more of the scene as we see more of Audrey and Morgan on their excellent and occasionally homicidal European adventure. It’s kind of sweet, that as the women undertake this cat-and-mouse intrigue, a character is given time to have an inner life and look back at the spy who dumped her with some fondness. On the other hand, as the friends wonder if they can trust MI6 agent Sebastian (Sam Heughan of “Outlander”), he seems to be after the same thing that interested Drew… and naturally, that means Audrey, who you start to think would be better off with the far better-looking English agent.
For all its complicated plot machinations, The Spy Who Dumped Me has moderate ambitions – call it Romy and Michelle’s Mission Impossible – which as a tale of friendship is already a few steps ahead of the Austin Powers franchise. Sure, you can get much better spy action elsewhere this month, but this is where you can savor a few seconds of amiable sisterhood and enjoy a bunch of hit-and-miss below-the-belt jokes, with Balzac the clear winner.
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