The Spy Who Dumped Me

The best thing about this film is the title.

Taking the piss out of cinematic genres requires a soft hand and a degree of subtlety that doesn't appear to exist in Hollywood in the 21st.

"Irony anyone?"

"Eh?"

Rule 1 is getting the casting right - in this case two stupid girls who are caught up in an international game of hide and seek. They have to be sympathetic; they have to be funny; they have to be like your best friend's kooky sister whom you enjoy having around but don't fancy in that way. Yet.

Rule 2 is following the stereotypical route that innocents in bad situs take while making it look fresh as if you're seeing it for the first time.

Rule 3 is avoiding the "my name is James" trap. If the good guys, who may turn out to be bad, act as if they are auditioning for the next Bond movie, with man boobs from too much gym flexion and what the call "the simmer effect" in gay mags, you know you have been here before and don't want to repeat the experience.

Rule 4 is taking risks with the plot and avoiding the use of Eastern European body builders in torture scenes.

Of all the rules the first is most important. Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon don't match up. McKinnon, the blonde one, tries too hard to be goofy in the old fashioned get-her-off-the-stage way and Kunis is not exactly the girl next door although she's normal without being natural (i.e she's acting).

"What about the plot?"

"The what?"

A waitress (Kunis) in a L.A coffee shop is chatted up by a customer (Justin Theroux) who has that charm-on-a-stick easy watching quality which tends to melt in the noonday sun. He becomes her squeeze on temporary loan before becoming the central exhibit in a crime scene. Apparently he was a spy.

The waitress and her best friend (McKinnon) are chased across the globe because they have an electronic file that looks like the head of a disposable razor blade. They don't know what it is or what's going on or why people are being shot everywhere they look.

There's only one thing for it: don't look.