An unwarranted follow-up to a rather dreadful film.
‘My Spy’ of 2020 was a movie that got slammed by many. Which is why I don’t know why Prime Video green-lit a sequel. The two actors in the previous movie, Dave Bautista and Chloe Coleman, were fairly good but the writing was quite poor, offering little actually funny lines or witty story arcs.
But anyhow, here we are with Bautista featuring in motion pictures as the hulking CIA agent JJ, and now Sophie (Coleman), who is in her teenage years and is being taken care of JJ, who sees himself as a good father to her. The problem, however, is that Sophie needs her privacy which is a rare occurrence as JJ believes that someone is studying her every move.
When Sophie’s school choir has an opportunity of performing at the Vatican in Rome, Sophie and the choir members are flown to Rome, and JJ decides to accompany Sophie’s school as a chaperone. He doesn’t make friends with the other kids at the first meeting even when he tries to bribe them with a beer he brought which turns out to be fake. Off course in the end, some of the teens including Ryan, who is a crush of Sophie, start calling him cool.
Of course, a trip wouldn’t be complete without teenage love affairs and untouched scenes like JJ trying to fit in with the young crowd! For the most part, the running time is actually comprised of a kidnapping story where the CIA chief David Kim (Ken Jeong) has his son kidnapped by a vicious villain who blackmails them with billions of dollars in exchange for him.
In the event that they do not comply, she will set off a bomb that is situated somewhere in the area of Vatican City.
It is just JJ and Sophie to the rescue, the latter has gun-wielding abilities that were imparted to her by JJ during the training. With them are David and Bonnie (Kristen Schaal), a tech auto who plays comic roles as well as assists in the mission. The most humorous is the scene where David and JJ play a cat and mouse game with a flock of man eating finches, but, why on earth would these kinds of birds hate people so much?
Some of these are well constructed and interspersed with interesting action, such as the chase around the city of Rome and the skydiving which serves as an opening for a sequence although it ends up being a dream. These are exciting scenes especially because of the unique and active direction by Peter Segal as well as the energetic performance of the actors.
Nonetheless, the plot hardly stands up, featuring a typical water melon of a villain who is simply drunk on destruction and there is no adequate reasoning behind his actions. There were indeed such villains in modest Roger Moore’s Bond movies back in the 70s and 80s, but that was then, now audiences demand more from a movie script where quite a reasonable plot is the minimum expectation of the viewers.
What many people may notice as a problem is the tone of the movie. It’s like a fun family movie some of the time. The film has adventurous comedy slapstick scenes with a teenager’s coming of age in the middle of sophomoric adventures may be. However, while My Spy The Eternal City may consider itself putting together a family movie, some parents might be offended by at least one use of the f-word and the sight of someone with a vibrator.
However, with all these concerns, this one is still a better movie than My Spy. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you run over and add it to your Prime Video list, however it does have a few funny moments and competent actors who do their utmost with a substandard script which this film certainly has.
Consider this a miss though, a miss that is not indiscriminate in wasting your time as long as one is realistic about the expectations. Bautista, Coleman and the rest of the cast however deserve something better than this and I’m sure many of you will also agree with me because we all deserve better.
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