I was not exactly interested in seeing Spies Like Us. I’m not a huge Chevy Chase fan, and quite frankly, I wasn’t aware of it being very good. But then Family Guy did a whole tribute episode around the movie, having stars Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd guest star as themselves with the plot saying Ronald Reagan loved Spies Like Us so much, he made the actors actual spies and they were on a mission that Peter Griffin somehow got involved in. I don’t much remember the episode beyond that, but I did wonder if I somehow missed something is considered a “classic” (my god that word gets overused) by people of my generation. Was it that good?
You know, I haven’t thought Family Guy has been all that funny and stopped watching it ages ago regardless. But I might as well check out the movie anyway.
A mission to infiltrate the Soviet Union for…some reason keeps going badly. To prevent the United States from losing more agents, the powers that be determine the best course of action is to send a pair of decoys who are nowhere near as competent. And the foreign service exam just produced two likely candidates for the decoys: Emmett Fitz-Hume (Chase) and Austin Milbarge (Aykroyd). Fitz-Hume is a pencil-pusher for the State Department who believed he could bribe and trick his way through the test. Milbarge is a highly observant Defense Department guy whose superior didn’t tell him about the testing date until it was too late to study much for it. Somehow Fitz-Hume’s antics get Milbarge caught up in the mess, and the two are kicked out for cheating. But then they go to spy school and beyond into a secret mission where they are never given any details on what was going on…
Now, as I watched this movie, the opening credits gave me some hope. An original son by Paul McCartney? A script co-written by Aykroyd? Elmer Bernstein did the music? John Landis directed? This is promising. Aykroyd was at the height of his cinematic career at the time, and Chase, well, he can be a charming smug asshole, and that did seem what the character was supposed to be at least in part. Sure, it is a little odd that Aykroyd’s longtime wife Donna Dixon was playing Chase’s love interest, but perhaps the movie is worth seeing after all.
And then I saw the movie and was utterly disappointed. There’s no reason for these two guys, who did not know each other before they both showed up to take the test at the same time, to be friends. I did not see why Milbarge suddenly started helping Fitz-Hume cheat during that test, or why these two guys bonded as much as they did. Heck, Milbarge comes across as a potentially competent spy in his own right with his general observation skills. He just didn’t really get the right sort of training. Fitz-Hume seems a lot more worthless, but maybe that was to allow Chase to be more of a wiseass. It might have worked better, but I didn’t even think the movie was all that funny.
If anything, the best thing about the movie is spotting famous people with small parts, most of whom are known better for their behind-the-scenes work, including the likes of Frank Oz, Terry Gilliam, Joel Coen (of the Coen Brothers), Sam Raimi, Larry Cohen, and special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen. However, that wasn’t enough to get me to recommend what is a rather lackluster at best movie. It’s not so much bad as it is dull.
Grade: C-
0 Comments