Movie Review:

My Spy ** / *****
Directed by: Peter Segal.
Written by: Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber.
Starring: Dave Bautista (JJ), Chloe Coleman (Sophie), Parisa Fitz-Henley (Kate), Kristen Schaal (Bobbi), Greg Bryk (Marquez), Ken Jeong (David Kim), Nicola Correia-Damude (Christina), Devere Rogers (Carlos), Noah Dalton Danby (Todd), Vieslav Krystyan (General Gregovich), Basel Daoud (Hassan), Ali Hassan (Azar), Olivia Dépatie (Selma), Keller Viaene (Emmy), Jean-Michel Nadeau (Koll), Laura Cilevitz (Ms. Besser), Darrin Baker (Dr. Weller), Chris D'Silva (Andre), Rakhee Morzaria (Tina). 
 

Hollywood continues to think that teaming up a muscle bound action star with an adorable little kid is comedy gold. In essence, they keep on trying to capture what worked in Kindergarten Cop (1990) – where Arnold went undercover as a kindergarten teacher to try and out a criminal, and then ended up learning some valuable lessons from the kids. Kindergarten Cop is hardly a classic – but it works. And every time we get another muscle bound star, it feels like someone in Hollywood dusts off another script in the same vein for them to star in – like Vin Diesel in The Pacifier or Dwayne Johnson in The Tooth Fairy or The Game Plan. So, now, it’s Dave Bautista’s turn in My Spy – a film where he stars as a CIA agent, who while on a surveillance mission ends up befriending a small girl – who he will eventually have to protect from some very bad men. It’s the most blatant of the Kindergarten Cop clones we’ve seen. It’s sporadically charming, and kids will like it (mine did anyway) – but I have a hard time believing anyone else wouldn’t have rather just watched Kindergarten Cop again (or better yet, a far better movie).
 
You can see why Bautista would be drawn to this role. He’s still trying to establish himself as an actor outside of Drax the Destroyer for Marvel – a role he has been good in, but isn’t exactly a challenging role. He was quite good in a small role in Blade Runner 2049. Here, in a comedic role, he is fine – it’s not that a role that far removed from his action movie roots – the film has some action sequences in it – but it also allows him to be funnier. He handles it well. Kristen Schaal, as his partner, is perhaps even funnier in a much smaller role. And young Chloe Coleman is quite a charmer.
 
The film itself though is on rails from beginning to end. You can pretty much tell everything that is going to happen from the outset, and the film offers no surprises – no twists, nothing original. For kids, this probably isn’t too worrying – there’s often nothing original in them anyway, and the ones who will be drawn to this are too young even to remember The Pacifier or The Tooth Fairy – let alone Kindergarten Cop. For parents, the fact that the film skipped its theatrical opening for streaming instead is a blessing – it allows you to either plunk the kids in front of the TV for some quiet time, or else just kind of half pay attention to the film – which is about all the attention the movie requires.
 
The film is fine – it does what it sets out to do. It’s just that it sets the bar so low that it’s hard for the film to actually be all that good. For Bautista, it accomplishes its goal. But unless you have kids you are trying to distract, there really is no reason to see the film.