
I barely recall the first My Spy film. Even for being released in the hazy streaming blitz of the 2020 pandemic, it was such a bland spy comedy that presented a Kindergarten Cop style plot that Dave Bautista could sleep walk through and I wouldn’t blame him. I initially tossed aside the first film as being that obligatory Kindergarten Cop movie for tough-guy actors as a rite of package. Times must really be tough, though, if Bautista returns to this even more forgettable spy comedy.
The problem with recalling My Spy is key to appreciating the emotions and flat hilarity of The Eternal City. Dave Bautista is still the CIA agent JJ, but has settled more into his role as a desk jockey dad. Chloe Coleman returns as Sophie, the young kid who forced her way into working with JJ on cool spy missions. The sequel finds JJ having to get away from the desk and become a more active dad when Sophie, the adopted girl, has a trip to Italy with her choir group.
There are some missing codes for nukes and some characters are held hostage and…it never hits. This is mostly because the daddy-daughter dynamic between JJ and Sophie is so dry that there’s hardly any sparks between them. Even the spats they have while on the trip to Italy feel so boring, where JJ is so tired of constantly tracking Sophie that he lets her explore Italy and break curfew for a bit to have some fun.
The dryness is even more apparent in the spy plot. How do you have a film with Flula Borg as a villain and not give him some moments to shine? Flula works best when he plays an eccentric German and not a stock German antagonist who tries and fails to deliver dry comedy. Anna Faris also has the same problem for being cast a villain who seems to be entirely reliant on her third-act reveal and her obsession with a voice distorting device for listing her demands. It’s not just villains though. Ken Jeong and Kristen Schaal are in this film as JJ’s support and they do not have a funny script to work with, struggling to make a meal out of little.
The whole film has this tone of placing all the comedy on the actors to pick up the slack of a generic spy plot. Maybe the comedy would follow if they got Bautista, Jeong, and Schaal in front of the camera again. It does not. There are gags, but they’re as bog-standard as the action sequences, showcasing another routine exercise of Bautista’s skill with punching people very hard. Even the dad-life bits fall so short of not just jokes but chemistry. There’s an uncomfortable distance between JJ and Sophie that the inevitable declaration of how Sophie better recognizes her adoptive dad as a fatherly figure arrives abruptly and without much heart.
I’m not sure who asked for a My Spy sequel, but even that camp will be let down by this watered-down retread. I really feel for Bautista’s declaration of wanting more challenging roles beyond the blustering muscles of his many action pictures. I can’t wait to see what he does next, but I sincerely hope it’s not a dopey script where the bulk of the comedy relies on his bulk and biceps. Or at least not a film where he gets pecked in the face by CGI birds.