“The Spy Who Dumped Me” is the latest entry in a genre of films that, until recently, felt nearly nonexistent: the female buddy comedy. Providence…
“The Spy Who Dumped Me” is the latest entry in a genre of films that, until recently, felt nearly nonexistent: the female buddy comedy. Providence native Susanna Fogel’s blockbuster directorial debut blends action set pieces with road trip comic banter as Audrey (Mila Kunis) and her best friend Morgan (Kate McKinnon) take a harrowing trip through Europe pursued by armed baddies after Audrey’s ex-boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux) turns out to be a CIA spy.
Though the film eventually shows that its female characters are equally adept (or even superior) at spy work compared to their male counterparts, Variety reports that studio executives are aiming for a $10-15 million opening weekend haul at the box office, finishing behind Tom Cruise’s spy flick “Mission: Impossible — Fallout.”
As for critics, reviews have trended slightly more negative than positive, with the film earning a 42 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this article’s publication.
That said, a single number can’t adequately capture the range of critical response, and many of the reviews coded as “fresh” or “rotten” by the critical aggregation site have a bit more nuance. To help you judge whether to rush to theaters starting Thursday afternoon, here’s what some of the top film critics are saying, both good and bad, about “The Spy Who Dumped Me.”
New York Times critic A. O. Scott appreciated the way the rock-solid friendship between Kunis’s and McKinnon’s characters played against conventions.
Richard Brody of The New Yorker praised Kunis’s and McKinnon’s chemistry and credited Fogel’s keen direction.
While Robert Abele of The Wrap found “The Spy Who Dumped Me” hit-or-miss, he said that audiences need to see more movies like it.
Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune was one of several critics who thought McKinnon was the best part of the movie.
Writing for Rogerebert.com, Christy Lemire also had a problem with the film’s excessive violence.
In his two-star review, The Boston Globe ‘s Ty Burr said that the film’s strengths lie less in scenes concerned with the plot and more in sequences with Kunis and McKinnon riffing on female friendship, calling the film “an easy, awfully disposable two hours.”
Entertainment Weekly ‘s Chris Nashawaty savaged the film, calling it “a mirthless, dead-on-arrival dud,” and criticized both McKinnon’s performance as over-the-top and Fogel and co-writer David Iserson’s screenplay as unfunny.
For The Washington Post, Sonia Rao cleverly referred to the film as “the cinematic equivalent of The Cheesecake Factory,” which she did not mean favorably.
In her review for Slate, Inkoo Kang criticized Fogel for making numerous wrong decisions when translating her script to the screen, and relying on an overabundance of tropes.
