SPY (2015)​ could be your antidote to a grim new year

Up until now I've found Melissa McCarthy ​fairly funny​ but not hilarious​​... she tries too hard​,​ the usual ​self deprecating attempts at humour come across as painful self pity

​but.. in SPY (2015)

Add Jason Statham,, Miranda Hart and Peter Serafinowicz​, Jude Law​ ​and a few others to vary the humour a bit (bat infestation at the CIA?) and the results ​are just.. hilarious. I enjoyed SPY more than SPECTRE.

The joke in this Bond parody is NOT that the Spy is a big woman, the joke is that the Spy is a big woman and she's eventually revealed to be a highly competent super agent -​ ​while having an unfortunate choice in friends​ (Miranda Hart)​, a potty mouth and general lack of class and self control. Melissa McCarthy's desk job agent gets her promotion to the field when her CIA boss finds footage of her in training, where she runs out of bullets in a training exercise and is so motivated she attacks targets and later the trainers with her bare hands.

Miranda Hart I would think must be big Hollywood movie star from this point and Statham will probably just be doing comedies for the rest of his film career. You'll love the way Jude Law is playing effectively a classic Fleming/Kingsman Bond and Statham is playing a Daniel Craig "Blunt instrument" 007 taken to Monty Python extremes.

Like Kingsman it is completely subversive of the Bond film (in Kingsman it is Bond as a working class kid, here it is Bond as a generously proportioned woman) and like Kingsman beyond a certain point it takes itself completely seriously. The action in both Kingsman and Spy is good enough to feature in actual Bond films, most notably there is a sensational knife vs frying pan fight in SPY.

Mostly you'll come out giggling at memories of Miranda Hart ("that sweaty Big Bird!") and Jason Statham's insane character but still what made me laugh the most was Hart and McCarthy talking Spy names

which are apparently ​y​our ​p​ets ​f​​i​rst ​n​ame + ​s​treet you lived in = your spy name

​Hart's characters spy name works out as
"Amber Valentine"​

and McCarthy reveals hers is
 “Meatball Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.”


This review was held over from last year after a bit of personal heartbreak.
2015 was truly a classic for spy films which I put in this order.

1. Bridge of Spies
2. Kingsman
3. Mission Impossible Rogue Nation
4. SPY
5. SPECTRE
6. The Man From UNCLE

not seen SPOOKS movie yet