It’s pretty much impossible for Kate McKinnon to dip below a basic level of funny, and her presence keeps the fizz in this spy spoof action-comedy from director and co-writer Susanna Fogel. McKinnon works well with her co-star Mila Kunis, although as so often in this kind of film, you suspect that they could get more laughs by doing some extended on-camera improvisation. Well, that isn’t how the genre works.
Kunis plays Audrey, distraught because she has been heartlessly dumped via text by her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux), who is, quite without Audrey knowing it, a secret agent. Her mercurial and intensely loyal best friend, Morgan (McKinnon), comforts her in such an empowering way that the two of them wind up on a chaotic but kickass spy adventure that takes them all over Europe, crashing cars and butting heads in Vienna, Paris and Berlin.
In the course of all this, a smoulderingly handsome MI6 agent called Sebastian (Sam Heughan) falls hard for Audrey; Morgan herself doesn’t find love as such, although she does have a massive crush on the Judi Dench-style spy chief played by Gillian Anderson. (Incidentally, the standup Iliza Shlesinger in her new Netflix special has a bit on how “funny” female stars are not eligible for mainstream hetero-romantic fulfilment in movies; non-funny female leads get Ryan Gosling but funny women wind up being paired with actors such as Steve Zahn.) Anyway, this comedy canters along and there’s some predictably great stuff from McKinnon, particularly on the subject of her character’s needy ex-boyfriends, who may include one of the most famous intelligence agents in US history, and her fatal attraction to older men, allegedly including Mandy Patinkin.
