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I Spy
**
Cinema
Reviews - Week of January 24, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12A. USA.
96 minutes. Directed by Betty Thomas. Written by David Ronn, Jay Scherick,
Cormac Wibberley, Marianne Wibberley; based on characters created by Morton
Fine, David Friedkin. Starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson, Famke Janssen,
Malcolm McDowell, Gary Cole, Phill Lewis, Viv Leacock, Keith Dallas, Tate
Taylor, Lynda Boyd, Bill Mondy.
Going to the movies is not the popular activity
that it was decades ago, and double features are events that most modern
audience members will never have experienced. You no longer get to see an
A-list studio production accompanied by something that the company threw
off in a hurry to fill seats and make quick bits of cash. "I
Spy" is what passes for a B-movie these days; it looks crummy and
rushed, but it's been financed by Columbia TriStar and features a major
star.
Eddie Murphy plays a boxing champ famous enough
to be on cellphone terms with the American president and have a host of
sycophantic goons who don't mind him trying to fly his own jet. The character's
name is Kelly Robinson, which I remember clearly because every two minutes
Murphy is to be found shouting, "I'm Kelly Robinson! I'm Kelly Robinson!"
He is enlisted by a spy played by Owen Wilson to go to Europe and help gain
entry to a celebrity party, which is actually a front for an arms dealer
(Malcolm McDowell) to sell a high-tech invisible plane capable of delivering
nuclear warheads.
I'm skimming over the plot, because it's basically
just an excuse for Murphy and Wilson to get into chases, blow up scenery,
and trade one-liners while they're rushing about the place. The spy stuff
has obviously been treated without care by the filmmakers. Action sequences
are cobbled together and cautious in their scope, gadgets look unconvincing
(even one of the characters observes, "This looks like it came from Radio
Shack in 1972!") and videophones have those fake-looking superimposed screens
that ring of cheap sci-fi.
There's a scene early on in the film where an
American pilot escapes a Ukrainian detention centre, and we see soldiers
begin to chase him through the woods. Foreign shouting is heard on the
soundtrack, and for some reason "I Spy" feels the need to include subtitles
that read, "The American pilot has escaped! Let's chase him through the woods!"
If the director has such contempt for audience intelligence, why does she
assume we can read?
You do an action comedy properly by taking the
action as seriously as the comedy. Think about older Murphy vehicles like
"48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Cop", which were involving and exciting as
well as funny, rather than mere showcases for star power. But "I Spy" doesn't
give a crap. It wants to get away with exploiting the energy of its stars,
and everything else, including the production design, seems to have been
conceived, rehearsed and designed on the spot.
The funny thing is, it doesn't matter all that
much. It's depressing that the performers are appealing when they're doing
little other than lazy shouting and waving of hands, but they are. Murphy
is one of the instinctively inspired comic talents of our time, and he has
to be in actively bad material for it to ring false. Owen Wilson, with his
gee-whizz whining shtick, is a nice counterpoint to Murphy's hyperactivity.
The girl in the picture is Famke Janssen, who is as cunning and sexy as ever,
and gets a passing grade for simply showing up.
"I Spy" has a plot that is impossible to give
a crap about, and is based on a 1960s TV show that I, and no doubt many of
you, have never seen. It's easy to watch trash, and although Murphy and his
co-stars deserve better, it would be wrong for me to lie to you and say that
I was bored. You wanna waste an hour and a half at the movies, maybe even
take a quick nap, and still have an okay time? See this.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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