Spy (2015) * *

Directed by:  Paul Feig

Starring:   Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jude Law, Jason Statham, Miranda Hart, Bobby Cannavale

Spy is an improvement over recent Melissa McCarthy vehicles.    I grant you that it is not difficult to improve on dreck like Identity Thief, The Heat, and the woeful Tammy, but Spy has some funny moments before succumbing to its desire to appeal to the lowest common denominator.     The supporting cast creates some genuine laughs with their personalities and Spy almost threatened to work, but it fell short.    

Why did it fall short of becoming a comic diamond in the rough?    Director Feig has directed McCarthy in Bridesmaids and The Heat, two movies in which McCarthy played a vulgar, uncouth character with a sailor's mouth.     In Spy, she plays CIA analyst Susan Cooper, who is the right-hand of debonair superspy Bradley Fine (Law).     She works with him from the comfy confines of CIA headquarters while he battles the bad guys.     She also has an unrequited crush on him, which becomes seemingly forever so after he is killed by the movie's villain Rayna Boyanov (Byrne).   

The CIA's agent list soon becomes compromised and Susan is put to work in the field because she would not be recognized as a spy.    Her mission is to track down Rayna and retrieve the list.   How many movies will it take before the CIA catches on that leaving a list on a hard drive somewhere is not the most secure way to maintain its roster?     Susan is a fish out of water with little experience.     This rankles veteran spy Rick Ford (Statham), a macho braggart who tells Susan how he was able to stitch on his torn off arm one time in a pinch.     Statham is funny while poking fun at his rugged screen persona.     He is the opposite of Bradley in every way.

Susan is aided by her own analyst, the awkward, very tall Nancy (Hart).    Hart nearly steals the movie with her giraffe-like height and her social ineptitude.     But she is loyal, sweet, and likable.  
Byrne has fun with her Eastern European accent and general bitchiness.     The parts are in place for Spy to deliver the goods, but then it missteps almost fatally and doesn't recover.

McCarthy is at first appealing as Susan, but then there comes a point where she poses as Rayna's bodyguard and becomes the foul-mouthed insult comic she played in The Heat and Tammy.     It grinds the movie to a halt and gobbles up goodwill like Pac Man gobbles up pellets.     Susan swears left and right and smacks people around, including Rayna, who seems to admire her new bodyguard's attitude.     This smacks of Feig and McCarthy reverting back to form instead of daring to try something new with McCarthy.     She can play sweet and likable, so why turn her into a vulgarian?     What exactly is funny about swearing every other word and slapping people?     The Three Stooges would find this excessive.

After that, Spy falls apart.     It focuses on a plot we truly could not care less about and forgets why it is funny.     Austin Powers it isn't.    I wish McCarthy would dare to continue venturing out and playing down-to-earth characters like she did in St. Vincent.     She has a genuine likability to her, if only she would play to it more.     It is time for her to move on.