Spy review: Move over James Bond, Melissa McCarthy is here and she is fabulous

If you are watching a film and in one scene, a character points at an image on a computer screen and says, ‘Can you enhance that for me?’ following which the camera zooms in and hey presto, the blurred detail is now as high definition as it gets, you know you’re in the middle of a spy film. In case of Spy, director Paul Feig has made his intentions clear with the title itself and as it unfolds, all the standard spy scenes are rolled out for our viewing pleasure. With one tiny adjustment: they’re being parodied within an edge of their genre-specific life. Clichés becomes funny simply because they’ve been clearly identified as clichés. There’s even a credit sequence featuring a deep-throated Adele duplicate warbling about the end of the world or some such over graphics of feminine silhouettes which merge into an eye and then a gun. Basically, it’s Bond 101. [caption id=“attachment_2303326” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Melissa McCarthy in Spy. Image from Facebook.[/caption] Spy is Feig’s third feature in his hoe-mance trilogy, after Bridesmaids and The Heat. With each film, Feig has given Melissa McCarthy increasingly meatier roles. This one is an out-and-out McCarthy experience as she curses, falls, sashays and kicks her way to glory. McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a desk-bound CIA analyst who lacks confidence and is in love with her fellow agent, the dashing, vain and appropriately named Bradley Fine (Jude Law). “Who’s the finest?” he asks himself, after each successful operation. Bradley is what we girls call ‘a nice douchebag’. The kind who will never do something as awful as physically assault a girlfriend, but who will ask Susan to pick up his dry cleaning, fire his gardener for him and then suggest that she get some cats “because they are good company”. Blinded by love, Susan is also (unfortunately) a doormat par excellence. We know this because she keeps saying things like “Christmas on a cracker!” and “Good gravy!” when she should actually be sticking her middle finger up in Bradley’s direction. Does their love have a future? Is Bradley aware of his douche-ness? Will Susan confront him? Who cares? Certainly not Feig, who is more concerned with Susan figuring a life beyond Fine. Feig surrounds McCarthy with a superlative cast and makes sure she is able to kick a huge amount of ass (literally) as Susan discovers her inner badass. This happens after Fine is killed on a mission and the identities of all active CIA agents are revealed. A nuclear weapon is on the loose and it is up to Cooper, who has never left her desk during her entire tenure, to save the world. Giving her company are Jason Statham as the unbelievably macho agent Rick Ford, Miranda Hart as her fellow desk minion Nancy and Alison Janney as her boss Elaine Cracker. By now, if your inner patriot going, ‘But how is hamari Nargis Fakhri in it?’, I am happy to tell you that she looks smashing and gets to run on top of cars and fight McCarthy in an edge of the seat sequence featuring pots, pans and kitchen knives. She only has two lines of dialogue but we will take this over Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in The Pink Panther 2 any day. Of course, Spy wouldn’t work half as well if we didn’t have a villain who can match Susan’s smarts. Feig gives us the beauteous Rose Byrne as Rayna Boyanov, a supremely spoilt brat whose hair is curled and piled up so elaborately that I idly concocted a backstory where we discover that one of the many bodyguards in her entourage moonlights as her stylist. Occasionally, as is evident from my shoddy backstory attempt, Spy sags and the mind wanders, as a predictable conclusion plays out, but never for long. Byrne and McCarthy’s bitchy barbs are choreographed like a sword fight. Byrne chews up the scenery even when there is little of it to chew and the two actress’ equation is a prime example of the distinctive brand of yin that has made Feig famous. In an age of smouldering spies who take themselves far too seriously — Sam Mendes and Daniel ‘Bond’ Craig, we’re looking at you — it’s refreshing to remember the quirk and good cheer that made spy movies so much fun in the first place.