Tag: Kate McKinnon

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Arts

The Spy Who Dumped Me gets smart in the end

Kate McKinnon and Mila Kunis are besties who find themselves at the center of international intrigue in The Spy Who Dumped Me. LIONSGATE

Don’t judge The Spy Who Dumped Me by its first 20 minutes, because if you bail on what seems like another forgettable high-concept frenemy gross-out fest, you’ll miss the best hard-R comedy of the year since Game Night. Fueled by the terrific chemistry between stars Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon and deftly directed by Susanna Fogel, The Spy Who Dumped Me eventually gets where it’s going, and you’ll be glad you stuck it out.

The film follows Audrey (Kunis) and Morgan (McKinnon) in the fallout of having been unwittingly entangled in an episode of international counterterrorism. A year after Audrey’s boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux) breaks up with her via text message, she threatens to burn the things he left behind. This draws Drew out of hiding, and he reveals his secret career as a spy. He also mentions that in his box of belongings is a key piece of intelligence that must be delivered by Audrey and Morgan, sending them across Europe to learn this whole espionage thing as they go.

Frequently, adding the tag “comedy” to a genre means that the co-hyphenate is half-baked: A horror-comedy has a few zombies but is never all that scary; a comedy-drama has a semi-serious story but they crack jokes and hug at the end. So when the first shootout breaks out in The Spy Who Dumped Me, it comes as a jolt of electricity, bringing to life what starts as a directionless riff on breakup movies. The action is quick and exciting, and does not skimp on the idea that a lot of this work is killing—the movie pauses the first moment Audrey has to shoot someone, as it should. Morgan’s antics go from winding up McKinnon and letting her go to giving her a full emotional arc, examining the self-image of someone who is always dismissed as flighty and told she is “a lot.” The comedy is smart, the sendups of spy stories don’t come at the expense of intrigue, and the cast gels from a random assemblage of individual talents to a cohesive unit, leaving you guessing until the end.

It may seem like this review has dwelled on the movie’s opening, but it’s not just a matter of it being less funny or engaging than what follows. Twenty laugh-free minutes in what is supposed to be a comedy can feel like a lifetime. There are jokes at the start, but all of them land with a mighty thud, the sort that fills people with dread that it’s all going to be like this. After the two leads get to Europe is when the real laughs and genuinely exciting action start, and where the setup pays off. Is this a result of the expectation of nonstop insanity promised by the marketing? Maybe our expectations need to be reset. Director Fogel finds her rhythm before too long, so she should be allowed as much setup time as she requires. Either way, The Spy Who Dumped Me picks up just when you were expecting to give up on the whole thing.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

R, 117 minutes; Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

Playing this week 

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Ant-man and The Wasp, BlacKkKlansman, Christopher Robin, Crazy Rich Asians, Eighth Grade, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Mission Impossible: Fallout

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Ant-man and The Wasp, Blindspotting, Christopher Robin, The Darkest Minds, Eighth Grade, The Equalizer 2, Hotel Transylvania 3, Incredibles 2, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Teen Titans Go! To the Movies

Violet Crown Cinema

200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

BlacKkKlansman, Blindspotting, Christopher Robin, The Darkest Minds, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, Eighth Grade, The King, Leave No Trace, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Sorry to Bother You, Three Identical Strangers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Categories
Arts

Rough Night loses direction on gender gags

Zoë Kravitz, Jillian Bell, Scarlett Johansson, Ilana Glazer and Kate McKinnon star in Rough Night, which is neither a re-hashing of Bridesmaids nor the bawdy crowd pleaser it aspires to be. Courtesy Sony Pictures

The story of Rough Night centers around a disastrous bachelorette weekend organized by an old friend who doesn’t know the difference between entertaining someone and monopolizing her time—which is a distinction the movie itself also has difficulty making.

Featuring a terrific cast with great chemistry, a mix of A-listers and promising up-and-comers, and written and directed by a duo best known for their work on the smash hit “Broad City,” Rough Night obviously wants you to enjoy its many individual components so much, it never pays attention to whether they all work together.

Rough Night
R, 101 minutes
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

Rough Night follows a group that gathers in Miami to celebrate the upcoming marriage of Jess (Scarlett Johansson) to Peter (Paul W. Downs, who also co-wrote the movie). Four of the five were inseparable pals in college: aspiring politician Jess, activist Frankie (Ilana Glazer), wealthy Blair (Zoë Kravitz) and Alice (Jillian Bell), who obsessively planned the getaway down to the most ludicrous detail. Jess’ Australian friend Pippa (Kate McKinnon) joins them, to the chagrin of possessive Alice. The friends decide to order a male stripper for Jess, who initially enjoys the attention but steps aside when he begins acting strange and aggressive in a very un-stripperlike manner. Alice, who cannot slow down for a moment, then leaps onto the chair where he is sitting, smashing his head against the fireplace and killing him instantly. From there, the group panics, and ideas for a cover-up begin almost immediately. The chaos that ensues challenges the bond between the friends that had gone unquestioned for 10 years.

To its benefit, Rough Night is not Very Bad Things, Weekend At Bernie’s, Bridesmaids or any of the movies that the plot might make you recall. Director and co-writer Lucia Aniello has a very clear vision of the movie’s comedic core, depicting the buildup to making a horrible decision and how it managed to seem almost reasonable at the time. Waiting to call the police sounds logical, moving the body away from the window seems like a good move, and by the time the women resolve to dump the corpse in the ocean, it almost seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

Rough Night loses itself when it can’t decide between madcap antics or character interaction, and as a result both suffer. At any given moment, it’s exclusively one or the other, and the over-the-top actions are much less funny when they don’t feel rooted in what we believe that person would do. Not that Rough Night—or any movie, for that matter—needs to be completely believable, but if we’re supposed to laugh at the absurdity of what’s happening on the screen, we need to understand the circuitous logic of the person doing it. You can do anything in a movie, as long as it’s motivated in some way. Very little in Rough Night is, and outrageous gags that were intended to be laugh-out-loud rarely rise above a chuckle, if that.

While all this is happening, Peter has been having what he perceives as a wild guys’ weekend at a wine tasting with his groomsmen. When a perplexing phone call from Jess makes him think the wedding may be off, he and his friends (including Bo Burnham, Eric Andre and Hasan Minhaj) concoct an absurd plan to reach her by pulling a “sad astronaut,” a reference to Lisa Nowak’s supposed nonstop drive while wearing adult diapers. After an inspiring speech, Peter hits the road, aided by Red Bull and expired Russian amphetamines. It’s a sideplot that mirrors Jess’ experience, and the specific idea is just as preposterous, but the comedy connects because it is constantly moving in one direction with no detours. These guys really are that boring; watching them arrive where they do, so calmly and reasonably, is a lot of fun because the characters make collective sense.

We know nothing about the main group of women except for one attribute each, and that they were friends in college. When everything stops so Frankie can make an activist joke or Pippa can perform whatever miscellaneous attribute that is unfairly foisted on such an unfocused role for such a talented performer, it just deadens the gag.

Rough Night is not a terrible movie; it is made by people who have been excellent in other mediums, and it stars a lot of people we ought to be rooting for who deliver good performances when they are able. But a little bit of focus goes a long way, and that would have made Rough Night the bawdy crowd-pleaser it clearly aspires to be but unfortunately is not.

Playing this week

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

47 Meters Down, All Eyez On Me, The Book of Henry, Cars 3,  Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Megan Leavey, The Mummy, Paris Can Wait, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Wonder Woman

Violet Crown Cinema
200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000  

All Eyez On Me, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, Cars 3, David Lynch: The Art Life, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, It Comes at Night, Megan Leavey, The Mummy, My Cousin Rachel, Raising Bertie, Wonder Woman