Movie Reviews: Spy, Listen Up Philip, Search Party

The suave but lethal Bradley Fine (Jude Law) is the CIA’s most successful Spy (12A), but when Bradley is killed by Balkan villain Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), Bradley’s deskbound analyst Susan ‘Coop’ Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) is sent into the field to track down the ‘mini-nuke’ Bradley was pursuing.

The note-perfect James Bond pastiche of the opening credits sets the tone for writer-director Paul Feig’s (Bridesmaids) spoof of the spy genre, as Coop – who has always craved the glamour of the spy game’s fieldwork – finds herself flitting from Paris to Rome and on to Budapest, albeit in an increasingly embarrassing series of disguises, aided and abetted by rogue agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) and her analyst pal Nancy (Miranda Hart).

The comic premise, as you might have guessed, is that Coop is an entirely unsuitable woman for the job, not least because she’s a woman, and Feig’s storyline initially thrives on placing Melissa McCarthy in situations where she flounders badly, thrashing around out of her depth.

Gradually, though, Feig, McCarthy, Byrne and Hart invert the spy movie’s alpha male tropes as the women take control of the story, helped hugely by two smart performances from Law as the excessively vain but morally weak Bradley Fine, and Statham in an hilariously boggle-eyed parody of his usual action-man schtick.

The stars of the show, however, are undoubtedly McCarthy and Byrne, particularly when they share screen time.

Byrne is deliciously deadpan as the ice-cold villain, while McCarthy, in her best role since Bridesmaids, revels in her metamorphosis from meek facilitator into an acerbic, ass-kicking action hero.

Jason Schwartzman stars as the eponymous hero of Listen Up Philip (15A), a New York-based novelist awaiting the publication of his second novel.

Exciting times, especially as his first novel was critically well received, but Philip, who doesn’t like to interact with anyone ‘in a human way’, is a very angry and selfish young man whose preferred method of communication is the vitriolic rant.

When his hero, the veteran author Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), offers Philip the opportunity to use his summer home as a writing retreat, Philip jumps at the chance to escape New York without stopping to consider the consequences of his departure on his relationship with his long-suffering girlfriend, Ashley (Elisabeth Moss).

Written and directed by Alex Ross Perry, Listen Up Philip opens as a promising satire on the insularity and self-absorption of the writer, as Philip stalks the New York streets with an unseen narrator (Eric Bogosian) informing us of the events of Philip’s life to date in an arch voiceover.

The contrast between how Philip imagines himself and how everyone else sees him is ripe for comic potential, but the Woody Allen-style set-up lacks subtlety: Philip is too excessively misanthropic to ring true, and the character is so pathologically self-absorbed that it’s very difficult for the audience to care about his ups and (mostly) downs.

Perversely, the female characters are far more interesting, but Elisabeth Moss and Krysten Ritter (playing Ike Zimmerman’s cynical daughter Melanie) are given little scope to deliver on their potential.

It’s cruelly funny at times, and Schwartzman is brilliantly cast as the loathsome Philip, but overall, and despite being steeped in the lore of the Great American Novel, the story’s impact is muffled by its relentlessly deadening monotone.

Search Party (15A) opens with Nardo (Thomas Middleditch) about to marry Tracy (Shannon Woodward), only for the ceremony to be interrupted by Nardo’s best bud Jason (TJ Miller), who announces that Nardo has previously confessed to doubts about his love for Tracy.

Cue Tracy’s indignant flight, all the way to Mexico to avail of the planned honeymoon, and Nardo’s belated pursuit, which ends with him car-jacked and naked somewhere in the middle of Mexico. Can Jason and Evan (Adam Pally) find Nardo and reunite him with Tracy?

Director and co-writer Scot Armstrong has Road Trip and The Hangover II on his CV, which lends an element of déjà vu to the weed-addled low-jinks that follow, as the boys get into a series of hugely embarrassing and increasingly implausible scrapes on their adventure south of the border, most of which involve the boys getting naked to some degree.

That said, Miller, Middleditch and Pally play likeable fools with their hearts in the right place, and while the story unfolds as if the script was lifted wholesale from a blueprint, there are enough chuckles to be had along the way to just about make it worth your while.