BEFORE: It's only Day 5 or so at home, and already the days are starting to run together - if I didn't have my movies to help me delineate, I don't think I'd even know what day it is. I think on some level before the virus crisis, if you'd told me I didn't have to go to work, I could sleep late every day, and my main concern each day would be figuring out what to read or watch to entertain myself, that would have sounded pretty good. But without the main responsibility of getting up and going to work, a strange effect takes over, and it's harder to recognize the preferred, leisurely parts of the day when they take up the whole day. Add in the stress and anxiety caused by the news, and you get this weird combination of fear, dread, boredom and ennui. Playing video-games in the early morning hours helps some, but that's like a temporary fix - the larger problems are still there. I should make a list of things to improve around the house, because without some kind of structure, my days are already starting to seem aimless. I guess we'll see what kind of news tomorrow brings, and then next week...
It's four in a row for Kate McKinnon as she carries over from "Ferdinand". She's also in the film "Yesterday", which is on my watchlist, but I'm saving that one, because I may need it in December to connect the Christmas movies on my list.
THE PLOT: Audrey and Morgan are best friends who unwittingly become entangled in an international conspiracy when one of them discovers the boyfriend who dumped her was actually a spy.
AFTER: Maybe it's the isolation affecting me, but this one didn't seem that bad, and honestly I was preparing for the worst. I guess maybe if you prepare yourself for the worst, sometimes an OK film can then surpass your expectations? It's a case of aiming really low, I think, which makes it easier to succeed? I'm not sure. But I didn't hate this one.
Obviously it's got a (probably) overly simplistic view of intelligence work, but hey, so did "Johnny English Strikes Again". Good guys are good, bad guys are bad, it just becomes a matter of figuring which is which - when in reality I'm guessing that things are probably more complex. And no, having double agents or someone who was THOUGHT to be a good guy being revealed as a bad guy doesn't count as more complex, it's just the same simplicity, only doubled. Think about the CIA, for example, does it do good things for America or bad things? I don't know, maybe a little bit of both? Maybe that depends on your nationality or your point of view? All I'm saying is, if I found out that somebody I knew works for the CIA, I wouldn't automatically mentally picture him wearing a white hat. Real-life situations don't get to be simple, but a film can tell us any potentially inaccurate thing it wants about how spies work.
This film is about two normal American women who run into international intrigue, and aren't sure whom to trust, or believe. They all want something left behind by Audrey's boyfriend, who gets outed as a CIA agent by other CIA agents, and right there that should be a red flag. Someone's not who they say they are, or somebody's a double agent, so Audrey and Morgan fly to Europe to make the delivery that Audrey's ex was going to make, and from their they stumble their way through a world of gadgets, weapons, torture and a Cirque du Soleil performance. (That almost sounds repetitive, isn't a Cirque du Soleil show a form of torture?)
For a minute, I was willing to entertain that Morgan was an embedded Russian agent or something - why did I think this? Because at one point, just before they fly off to Vienna, she reminds her friend Audrey that their friendship is real, and that she's not some secret agent who befriended her as a teen and has been concealing her true identity for 10 years. "Hmm," I thought, "what an oddly specific thing to deny in a conversation. Let's put a pin in that idea and see if it surfaces later as a plot point." Nah, it wasn't to be - but still, why point that out in a bit of dialogue? Red herring, I guess.
Maybe it's all the Grand Theft Auto I've been playing, but some of the jokes really landed for me - like when the girls jack a car from a well-dressed couple, then get in and realize that it's a stick-shift, and neither one knows how to drive it. The car sort of rolls away slowly, because they can't get it into gear, and the couple is walking along beside the car, banging on the windows to try to get their car back. Hilarious, and unexpected - never seen a joke like that in an action film before, not even a parody spy film. So often a character needs a car, takes one, and everything from there works perfectly, they never even need to adjust the seat or the mirrors, but think about it, all that would probably have to happen when you take someone else's car.
Sure, there are things that seem pretty far-fetched, but for the most part, that's OK, it's a movie, not meant to be any sort of really informative guide on how things like cell phone tracking, code decryption and using stolen passports really works. I guess go in like I did, not expecting a lot, and maybe then you'll find more entertainment than you planned on. Just a thought on how to approach it.
Also starring Mila Kunis (last seen in "The Angriest Man in Brooklyn"), Sam Heughan, Justin Theroux (last seen in "Joker"), Gillian Anderson (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story"), Hasan Minhaj (last seen in "Rough Night"), Ivanna Sakhno (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Fred Melamed (last seen in "Lemon"), Jane Curtin (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Paul Reiser (last seen in "The Little Hours"), Lolly Adefope, Kev Adams, Olafur Darri Olafsson (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Tom Stourton, James Fleet (also last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story"), Carolyn Pickles (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1"), Mirjam Novak, Dustin Demri-Burns.
RATING: 6 out of 10 songs on the jukebox
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