I Spy Review
by Bob Bloom (bobbloom AT iquest DOT net)November 4th, 2002
I SPY (2002) 1 star out of 4. Starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson, Famke Janssen, Malcolm McDowell, Gary Cole and Phil Lewis. Music by Richard Gibbs. Story by Marianne Wibberley and Cormac Wibberley. Screenplay by Marianne Wibberley & Cormac Wibberley and Jay Scherick & David Ronn. Directed by Betty Thomas. Rated PG-13. Running time: 96 minutes.
You laugh during many sequences of I Spy not because they're funny, but because they are so stupid.
The movie affords Owen Wilson and Eddie Murphy ample opportunities to rehash the same tired shtick they've trotted out in several other films.
Wilson is the laid-back, Zenlike dude, unfazed by events, while Murphy is the motor-mouth, self-centered, egotistical braggart who doesn't know when to shut up.
Watching them reprise these tiresome stock characters gnaws at you like an itch you can't reach to scratch.
I Spy is an embarrassment, a monotonous, disjointed jumble of borrowed plot points and situations. It's as flat as an open can of pop left sitting in the sun.
I Spy really has no connection to the groundbreaking 1960s' TV show that starred Robert Culp and Bill Cosby except for its title and the characters' names.
The movie, directed by Betty Thomas, who has made a career of helming feature versions of old TV shows, fails to be tongue-in-cheek. Instead the comedy, or what passes for it, is broad and crude, relying on knees to the groin and jokes about female anatomy for its laughs.
Perhaps I am being oversensitive, but the movie also propagates a new type of stereotype, a subtle form of racism that continues to rear its head in recent films; that of the wisecracking black man whose thoughts and actions are mainly focused on sex, wealth and self-indulgence.
Murphy and Martin Lawrence are the prime examples of this unfortunate characterization, which is becoming a contemporary Stepin Fetchit. These portrayals are growing irksome and tiresome.
Neither Murphy nor Wilson bring anything fresh to their roles. Murphy, as boxer Kelly Robinson, even falls back on his old Stevie Wonder impression from his Saturday Night Live days. And you can't differentiate between Wilson's Alexander Scott and his good-badman from Shanghai Noon or his fashion model persona from Zoolander.
The plot of I Spy revolves around the retrieval of an invisible jet, which a nefarious arms dealer — a tired performance by Malcolm McDowell — is trying to sell to the highest bidder.
Along the way, double crosses and triple crosses crop up like weeds on a lawn, but you really can't get too involved because the entire effort is an insult to the intelligence.
Four screenwriters claim responsibility for this nonsense, and the film plays as if they each just stapled their various scenes together and faxed them to the studio without looking at each other's work. At a mere 96 minutes, the movie feels much longer.
I Spy reeks of quick-buck mania, a movie that relies on a known property, a familiar title that will earn a weekend's worth of millions before it falls off the radar screen.
I Spy advertises itself as a movie with attitude. That's true, but it's one sorely in need of adjustment.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or at [email protected]. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at www.jconline.com by clicking on golafayette.
Bloom's reviews also appear on the Web at the Rottentomatoes Web site, www.rottentomatoes.com and at the Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
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