Rarely does a motion picture lay out its M.O. quite so succinctly; they may as well put flashing text on the bottom of the screen. For as we all know, one of the essential steps of becoming an action hero leading man is the wacky babysitting-the-kid comedy, in which our brutish star is paired with a precocious tyke, at whom he can glower and curse inappropriately, because tough guys are not meant for childcare, you see. But said child will eventually defrost our cold protagonist, whose gooey center will endear him not only to the kid (and, often, a nearby hot mom), but moviegoers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arnold Schwarzenegger led the way with the 1990 smash Kindergarten Cop<\/em>; Hulk Hogan and Burt Reynolds followed suit three years later with, respectively, Mr. Nanny<\/em> and Cop and Half<\/em>. Vin Diesel was The Pacifier<\/em>, The Rock led The Game Plan<\/em>, and John Cena fronted Playing with Fire<\/em>. And now it\u2019s Dave Bautista\u2019s turn, as the Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em> scene-stealer plays JJ, a former soldier and novice spy assigned to surveil single mom Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley) and her outcast nine-year-old daughter, Sophie (Chloe Coleman).<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve already seen that JJ, while undeniably good at pummeling people, is not much of a spy, and he further proves it by blowing their cover to little Sophie almost immediately. \u201cThat kid is tricky,\u201d he insists. \u201cIt\u2019s like dealing with terrorists.\u201d She blackmails him into the father figure she so desperately needs, and then into falling for her mom, which is kind of creepy when you factor in all of the surveillance they\u2019re doing. But there\u2019s a strange sense of timelessness to Erich and Jon Hoeber\u2019s screenplay, and I don\u2019t mean that as a compliment \u2013 it really feels like a screenplay that was written sometime in the late \u201890s, with all the expected characters, devices, and needle drops (\u201c\u2026Baby One More Time\u201d? Really?), and then given a quick tech rewrite in roughly an afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The performers do their best. Kristen Schaal is very funny (because Kristen Schaal is always very funny) as JJ\u2019s stakeout partner and biggest fan \u2013 again, it\u2019s a done-to-death character, but she gives it some juice. Fitz-Henley is charming as the mom, and Coleman finds both the spunk and sympathy of this little girl; she\u2019s trying so hard<\/em> to fit in, you can\u2019t help but feel for her. And they both have real chemistry with Bautista, whose flashes of slapstick and deadpan line readings prove him a capable comedy star, though we kind of already knew that about him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t gonna end like some movie,\u201d JJ assures Sophie, \u201cwith you and me sitting in little chairs having a tea party.\u201d But it may as well, because watching My Spy<\/em> is like watching someone ticking items off a checklist; it hits so many familiar beats, it feels like it was written by AI software. There are cool explosion walk-aways, wacky gay neighbors, and so much product placement for Doritos that I was half-expecting a Wayne\u2019s World<\/em>-style joke about it. But that would be too much to ask, of any of these shopworn devices; occasionally the picture will nod at their ubiquity, but folks, acknowledging clich\u00e9s is not the same thing as subverting them. The whole thing is kind of depressing, less an entertainment than an obligation. I dunno. My kid liked it. “My Spy” streams tomorrow on Amazon Prime.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the big set pieces in Peter Segal\u2019s My Spy is a grade-school art competition, in which our hero, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":14312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[1098,162],"class_list":["post-14309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies","tag-movie-review","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22799,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14309\/revisions\/22799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/myspy2-1024x576.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nC-<\/h1>\n\n\n\n