Casual
fans might not remember when James Bond got married, because it happened during
the brief but glorious Lazenby era. Needless to say, it didn’t last. Maybe it
will work out better for Corey Gage, but probably not. His relatively new
marriage will get particularly rocky when his old agency tries to pull him back
into cloak and dagger work—for his own good. The rusty super-agent tries to
simultaneously save the world and his marriage in Drew Mylrea’s Spy Intervention, which opens somewhere
tomorrow.
Intervention opens with a jokey
faux anthropological prologue, in which natural history dioramas illustrates
Sinbad-esque difference-of-the-sexes gags, like something out of early 1960s
rom-coms. Like most of the jokes here, these bits really don’t land. At least
we get a little forward momentum when Gage meet-cutes Pam Grayson during a
mission that goes down sideways. She is the reason why.
Suddenly,
Gage is willing to chuck away all the globetrotting and settle down with the
mall-store makeup sales associate, even though that leaves his final mission
unfinished. Of course, Smuts, his best friend at the agency (think more like U.N.C.L.E.
or CONTROL from Get Smart rather than
the workaday CIA) insists he return temporarily, to complete the job.
Naturally, he will be partnered with a bombshell. It’s to save the world, but
they also argue it will force him to remember what he’s really good at.
The
humor of Intervention is always quite
broad and mostly rather dumb. However, Mylrea and screenwriters Mark
Famiglietti and Lane Garrison suddenly start scoring laughs with the manic
farce of Grayson’s climatic dinner party. It’s probably not worth sticking
around for, but there is some kind of payoff at the end of the tunnel.
For
what it’s worth, Drew Van Acker is certainly willing to look ridiculous playing
Gage—perhaps too willing. Poppy Delevingne (sister of Carla) convincingly glams
down and suburbanizes up as Grayson, but nobody could sell the character’s
utter lack of intuition. Blake Anderson’s charmless Smuts quickly grows
tiresome, but Natasha Bassett actually manages to scratch a few laughs as
Alexandria, Gage’s femme fatale comrade.
Seen
better, seen worse, every week in fact. Honestly, this is a completely
forgettable film, so let’s do so. Not recommended, Spy Intervention opens tomorrow (2/14) in limited release.
