On July 18, the day the fourth season of the flagship show «The Boys», the same streaming service Prime Video premiered the spy comedy «My Spy: The Eternal City» starring Dave Batista and young Chloe Coleman. This is a sequel to «My Spy», which was released in 2020. In the review below, we tell you why the second part turned out to be noticeably worse than the first, which, by the way, did not grab stars from the sky.
Pluses:
beautiful views of Italian cities and fields;
Minuses:
The sequel nullifies the little good that was in the original film; the genre doesn't work at all (the comedy doesn't make you laugh, and the espionage doesn't thrill you); the narrative is boring and drawn out; the acting is wooden from Dave Batista;
«My Spy: The Eternal City»
Genre spy comedy
Director Peter Segal
Starring Dave Batista, Chloe Coleman, Kristen Schaal, Ken Jeong, Anna Faris, Craig Robinson
Premiere Prime Video
Year of issue 2024
Website IMDb
After the events of the first part, the tattooed, big-bodied CIA agent JJ has reconnected with Katie and become Sophie’s stepfather, trying to find a common language with the 14-year-old who is no longer so interested in the spy trade. Since Sophie is to go to Italy as part of the school choir, JJ agrees to accompany the children on this trip. But the heroes also find problems there, when unknown people kidnap the son of the CIA chief, David Kim. Now they have to do everything possible to neutralize the villains and cancel the catastrophe they have planned.
«My Spy» by comedy specialist Peter Segal was released in 2020 and was a frankly mediocre movie, but it had a nice chemistry between the main characters and found room for a few really funny jokes. The sequel categorically negates the modest achievements of its predecessor and is completely devoid of the slightest emotion. This is exactly the case when you get a strong impression that the bland script was written by a neural network for another streaming release, and it was not implemented in the best way.
In general, moving the action from the United States to Italy — is not a bad idea. At one time, even Marvel resorted to such a move when Peter Parker and his classmates went to da Vinci’s homeland in «Spider-Man: Far From Home» (2019). It’s a pity that the picturesque views of Italian cities and fields bathed in generous sunshine are, in fact, the only thing that can please the viewer’s eye in «The Eternal City».
The problem is that the movie doesn’t work on a comedic level at all, meaning that you won’t find any reason to smile here on a candlelit afternoon. And the espionage is done in a blatantly primitive way: the whole intrigue boils down to another nuclear suitcase and an inexorable countdown on the scoreboard. We’ve never seen anything like this in a movie before, and here we go again.
Since Sophie is now more interested in boys than in espionage, there is no room for cute scenes like «pretentiously walking in a slam dunk against the backdrop of an explosion» (a tired genre trope in action movies). Usually, sequel creators try to somehow multiply the successful elements of the original, but here the sequel literally loses the little that kept its predecessor afloat.
The pinnacle of local ridiculousness is a scene with poorly drawn computer-generated birds attacking the characters with their tiny beaks. Or the one where a schoolgirl skillfully handles a fight with two loburyaks. At this point, you clearly understand what level of cinema you are being offered.
There’s not much to mention the characters. If Batista and Coleman’s interaction in the first movie looked pretty cute, plus Kristen Schaal didn’t disappoint on the backing tracks, the sequel lost this element as well. Batista plays a completely wooden role, making the Drax deck from «Guardians of the Galaxy» would seem like a dramatic pinnacle. But what about Drax, even Groot is not such a tree compared to JJ, played by the former wrestler.
Others are not happy either. For example, the star of the parodies «Scary Movie» Anna Faris, for whom this is only her second feature in the last five years, is remembered only for her «The Matrix» and terrible makeup.
As a result, «The Eternal City» turns out to be not only an infinitely stupid movie, but also a damned long and boring one. There is absolutely nothing here that could captivate or entertain the viewer.
The local plot eventually sends its characters to the Vatican, and this made me think of another comedy with a climax in the same place — «EuroTrip». And it’s better to watch the mischievous movie 20 years ago (Matt Damon’s punk is incomparable there) than to waste time on such a bland and talentless novelty as this.
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