My Spy The Eternal City succumbs to its adolescent growing pains
We can only hope this was a fun Roman holiday for the cast and crew.
Given how nebulous the notion of a “hit film” is when it comes to streaming releases, particularly for releases from the barren year of 2020, it’s hard to think of a reason to sequelize My Spy. The film was originally intended for a big screen release before the theatrical shutdown led STX Entertainment to sell the distribution rights to Amazon Studios, which does not publicly share its metrics for measuring its streaming content’s success or failure. So we don’t know exactly how well My Spy (a cute enough film that served as Dave Bautista’s obligatory vehicle in which he’d play opposite a child—a not-so-proud cinematic tradition for ripped action stars) performed, but its limited appeal could only become muddied as co-star Chloe Coleman ages out of the “muscleman’s precocious foil” role.
Perhaps four years between films was simply too much for a fledgling attempt at franchising, but My Spy The Eternal City bears all the hallmarks of a sequel with nowhere to go and nothing on its mind. The change in setting from Chicago to Italy, the new film’s primary selling point, seems more like an enticement to bring back returning talent than a creative decision necessary to tell an interesting story. After all, what is a Roman vacation for if not to take in the sights and leave behind such petty concerns as plot, humor, and excitement?
Four years after JJ (Bautista) entered her life as a surrogate father figure, Sophie (Coleman) has graduated from childish pursuits like spy training to pursue a screenwriter’s favorite hackneyed obsession for teenage girls: a boy (played by Billy Barratt), for whom she has joined the school choir in hopes of getting his attention. When said choir is invited to Rome to sing at the G7 Summit, the now comfortably domestic JJ volunteers to chaperone the trip, only to have his repeated attempts to come off as a cool dad fail to win over Sophie or her peers. But when Sophie’s friend Collin (Taeho K), incidentally the son of CIA Director Kim (Ken Jeong), is kidnapped by JJ’s former spy rival (Flula Borg), JJ and Sophie must set aside their mutual angst to save him.
Where My Spy had the benefit of a relatively tight narrative with clear emotional throughlines for its two leads, The Eternal City lacks any sort of engine to drive its characters’ arcs. JJ is content to be a desk jockey at this point in his life, so while Sophie begrudges his attempts to connect with her, he is not a farcically suffocating presence, nor does he pursue action glory to prove he’s cool again. He’s just kind of there, and that’s apparently enough of a sin to cause strife and require an adventure of reconnection. Furthermore, Sophie’s clichéd high school dramatics don’t conflict with her developing action competence, so the teenage angst that dominates JJ and Sophie’s relationship does little to hamper the action shenanigans in store for them, to the point where there’s a pretty clear demarcation between the Sophie-centric first act, the JJ-focused second, and a third that leaves Sophie’s character arc atrophied.
This would be less of a concern if there were plenty of funny gags to keep things rolling, but The Eternal City’s desire to heighten its world into absurdity could not be more misguided. For example, an extended sequence featuring computer-animated “attack finches” feels like it belongs in a DreamWorks or Illumination cartoon, not a relatively grounded spy thriller whose characters already have the emotional intelligence of children. Trapped in unfunny scenarios that are expected to be funnier than him, Bautista sleepwalks through a role that neither challenges his comedic nor dramatic chops, and he’s given little to work with beyond being an alternately clumsy and competent action hero.
Jeong takes a more direct supporting role this time around, with Kristen Schaal returning and Anna Faris and Craig Robinson rounding out the cast, but each of them averages out to maybe one funny joke throughout the whole movie. One suspects the best lines were improvised, as the general tenor of the writing is to insult the intelligence of its audience by over-explaining the gag, usually in the form of characters insulting each other. Given the story’s want for a strong emotional core, the film’s humor can’t help but come across as mean-spirited and lazy in its delivery, with the actors unable or unwilling to pick up unpleasant material’s slack.
There isn’t even much of a sense that the action sequences have been thought through beyond constantly reminding us of the Italian setting, lending the film a thin touristy veneer that fails to capitalize on Rome as anything more than some stone architecture and maybe a vineyard. Hand-to-hand combat feels token, car chases are chopped into incoherent oblivion, and a ticking bomb dutifully pretends to raise the stakes without much cause for concern. Director Peter Segal, returning from the first film but more notable for his comedy experience in the likes of Tommy Boy and The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, is just not a strong choice for a faux adventure story, especially one that ostensibly seeks to deliver its audience to a foreign locale. The scattershot application of generic action set pieces only emphasizes The Eternal City’s inability to recapture the breezily casual comedy of its predecessor.
My Spy The Eternal City is so unconcerned with its obligations as an action-comedy that it fails to either thrill or amuse, making it a chore to actively pay attention to. Given that the fate of many a streaming film is to become background noise that plays while someone makes dinner or folds laundry, perhaps the intended goal of interstitial diversion has been nominally achieved here. However, that begs the question: If that’s the kind of viewership My Spy courted, how many people do Amazon expect to be pulled in by the promise of a sequel to a half-remembered background movie?