Where have you gone Eddie Murphy? A comedy nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Written: Aug 28 '03 (Updated Mar 07 '08)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: A few genuine comic moments.
Cons: Very few laughs, boring action scenes, weak story.
The Bottom Line: I cannot recommend a movie that thinks Gary Cole with a Spanish accent is funny.
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| jeff_wilder78's Full Review: I Spy |
Where hath thou gone thou funny comedic actor Eddie Murphy? Why hath thou such lousy taste in picking scripts? From classics like 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop and Coming To America to horrendous garbage ranging from Harlem Nights to Vampire In Brooklyn to the truly hideous Pluto Nash, one wonders how the mighty hath fallen.
Okay, enough of that. What follows is my ruminations on last years third Eddie Murphy misfire, the utterly pointless big-screen remake of I Spy. Considering how fast this movie disappeared from theaters (so fast that Epinions never got the chance to move it to the video and DVD category), one expects that it would be pretty terrible.
Well on the scale of bad Eddie Murphy movies released in 2002, I Spy falls in between. It is not as excruciatingly abysmal as The Adventures Of Pluto Nash, yet it is not as funny as Showtime (and considering how few actual laughs there were in that movie, it should be a sign that there's even fewer in I Spy).
What follows are a few general observations about this movie.
1: I Spy is yet another Hollywood remake of an old 1960s TV show. The only difference is that in this version, the roles are reversed. Eddie Murphy plays boxer Kelly Robinson (who was a Tennis Star in the TV series and Robert Culp played him) and Owen Wilson plays bumbling agent Alexander Scott. I wonder if Hollywood thought that switching the roles around would make the audience think it was in for something new. Nice try Hollywood, even though it didn’t work. What we're left with is a basic buddy movie. Yes Eddie Murphy has done good buddy movies before as the original 48 Hours proved. The difference is, in 1982 it was an original idea. In 2002, it's probably the most cliched idea Hollywood has in its limited arsenal of ideas.
2: Look Hollywood. I know that asking you to please STOP with the damn TV show remakes is asking too much so I will ask for something simpler. Please be more selective in choosing which shows to remake. The Fugitive? Yes. Charles In Charge? No. Wayne’s World? Yes. Three's Company? No. In addition, in the realm of cartoon characters, please keep your hands off of Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw etc.
3: As I previously noted, Wilson plays bumbling agent Alexander Scott and Murphy plays arrogant boxer Kelly Robinson. The two wind up getting teamed up on a mission to Budapest (pay attention to the location, it will get more prominent later on in this review) to track down a villain (Malcolm McDowell) who has stolen a stealth fighter plane and plans to use it for evil purposes. Partners, stolen weapons, villains played by Malcolm McDowell. What's new?
4: There are several action sequences in here. Unfortunately, all of them are ho-hum. The one that sticks in ones mind after seeing the movie is the one where Scott and Robinson try to handle the stealth fighter. Unfortunately, it comes off weak compared to a similar scene in last year's XXX (which, for all its faults, at least had genuinely exciting action scenes).
5: There is one particularly great comic scene in I Spy. That scene comes when Scott is trying to get up the courage to tell fellow spy Rachel (Famke Jansen) how he feels. Robinson coaches him through an earpiece. How do the try to seduce Rachel? By singing Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing. Of course, the seduction does not go as planned. That is easily the funniest scene in the whole movie.
6: Refer back to what I said earlier about Budapest. Because that's what a good part of I Spy is, a glorified travel brochure for the capital of Hungary. A large part of the middle portion of the movie could be chopped out and inserted into a "seeing the sights in Eastern Europe" documentary and most people wouldn’t notice the difference.
7: I wonder if the movie could have been seriously improved by reversing the roles of Murphy and Wilson. Wilson is a genuinely good comic actor, yet he never really brings the Alex Scott character to life. And Murphy's Robinson is rather obnoxious and annoying. Wilson would have brought a certain level of charm and self-deprecation to the Robinson role and Murphy could have done the put-upon agent part in his sleep.
8: Did we really need the Femme Fatale element here? What about the competition between Wilson and Gary Cole? Was Cole's Antonio Banderas type accent really necessary?
Let me rephrase that first question: Did we really need this movie? The answer is no and while it is nowhere near as bad as it could have been, it is still an unnecessary Hollywood budget inflator. If one gets the urge to see I Spy, do not be surprised if you find yourself quoting John Travolta's infamous line from the beginning of Swordfish about what the problem with Hollywood is.
Recommended:
No
Worst Part of this Film: Everything
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Epinions.com ID:
jeff_wilder78
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Member: Jeff Wilder
Location: Sunrise Florida USA
Reviews written: 853
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