The low point of last year’s lousy Melissa McCarthy vehicle, Tammy, was when the film completely changed from shrill, unfunny comedy to banal bathos in one ludicrous scene. McCarthy mooing with co-star Mark Duplass looking down at Niagara Falls was enough to make you ill. It’s even worse than the scene where McCarthy holds up a fast food joint to raise bail-money for her her doty, alcoholic aunt, Susan Sarandon. Yet Tammy actually may not be as bad as McCarthy’s turgid turn in the abominable Identity Thief. What happened to the promising comedic actress who was the best thing about the refreshing Bridesmaids? Why, unlike her charismatic role opposite Sandra Bullock in The Heat, was she suddenly unable to overcome nondescript screenplays?
Our worries are over. Reuniting with director Paul Feig (not surprisingly at the helm of Bridesmaids and The Heat), McCarthy has it going again. Her vulnerable yet assertive deskbound analyst turned in-the-field spy, Susan Cooper, hits all the right notes. It’s one of the funniest films you’ll see this year. Feig not only brings out the best in McCarthy, he surrounds her with three absolute pros: Rose Byrne, Jason Statham and Allsion Janney. The trio play their perfectly exaggerated characters to the hilt.
Byrne is Raina Boyanov, a deadpan spoof of a villain Bond-girl who happens to be Bulgarian. The perfect foil to McCarthy, her bitterness is as infectious as her piled-high hairdos and ridiculously tight dresses are absurd. Statham’s sleuth, Rick Ford, likewise spends the whole film insulting Cooper. He does so in rat-a-tat-tat hyper-monolugues consisting of little else besides profane-laden ticking off of his seemingly impossible physical exploits as a spy. Janney portrays Elaine Crocker, a no-bullshit CIA boss who delights in keeping Cooper in her place.
Adding to the spoils of three such fine supporting performances are two more. British TV comic Miranda Hart plays Cooper’s brutally honest sidekick, Nancy. Peter Serafinowicz offers an Italian spy a and driver, Aldo, who has a flair for most of the stereotypes of the aggressive, libido-driven Italian while he is clearly more interested in hitting on his ally in espionage, Cooper, than in any traditional spy-oriented tasks.
McCarthy’s Cooper is somehow good-natured yet at the same time unbridled and defiant. She is without regard for any of the hyper pretensions of Ford, the sardonic stuffiness of Boyanov, or the silliness of Aldo. Almost parenthetically, Jude Law is also in the film as Bradley Fine, a suave yet slight operative who would be nothing without Cooper coaching warnings and strategies in his earpiece while he dismantles a coterie of thugs in the film’s opening sequence. Just as Fine is indebted to his unheralded assistant, a rejuvenated Melissa McCarthy should thank her lucky stars she’s again in good hands with Feig. She might do well never to work with anyone else again.