Forget going on a trip with My Spy: The Eternal City
By Lisa Laman
A LOT of new American movies set either wholly or partially in Italy has debuted in the last 15 months. Mafia Mamma. Fast X. The Equalizer 3. Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning. Immaculate. Italy is a popular country with profoundly deep cinematic roots. American cinema’s sudden resurging love affair with Italy isn't inexplicable. Now it's time for My Spy: The Eternal City to try its hand at Italian backdrops. This sequel to a largely forgotten Dave Bautista comedy, like so many other family movie sequels, shifts its action to Europe. That's, unfortunately, not the only way The Eternal City distractingly emulates other motion pictures.
Super-spy J.J. (Dave Bautista) has settled nicely into his role as a stay-at-home dad for step-daughter Sophie (Chloe Coleman). He's gotten a little too enamored with fatherhood, though. A guy once known for snapping necks now uses his skills for helicopter parenting and baking scones. 14-year-old Sophie wants, like any teenager, her overbearing parents to leave her alone. There's no immediate chance for some space, though, once J.J. signs up to chaperone Sophie's choir trip to Italy.
While on this mission, evildoers like Crane (Flula Borg) kidnap one of Sophie's classmates. No time for J.J. and Sophie to absorb Italian landmarks. Now, with the aid of CIA higher-up David Kim (Ken Jeong), they've got to become super-spies once again and stop an evil plan involving nuclear launch codes. The world's fate is at stake...but more importantly, can this father/daughter relationship survive everything?
The only aspect of My Spy: The Eternal City that’s slightly surprising is its visuals. Images on-screen are a tad more polished than your average streaming comedy movie. I've seen the dredges of this cinematic domain, the likes of Game Over, Man!, The Wrong Missy, and Vacation Friends. These overlit titles have turgid cinematography straight out of my nightmares. With that track record, The Eternal City resonates as a slightly more polished affair. Most notably, director Peter Berg and cinematographer Larry Blanford lend the camera some energy and movement for certain scenes.
A sequence where a chipper J.J. rattles off factoids about Italian landmarks to a bunch of disinterested students, for instance, is captured through a gliding camera moving from the back of the bus filled with bored teenagers until it arrives at the front, where an excited J.J. lies. Later, in a more dramatic instance of this visual quality, a momentous moment involving Mr. Kim (Ken Jeong) sees the camera spinning around this distraught father like he's in an Ericson Cole movie. Even a stealthy chase scene in a field of gigantic sunflowers shows some visual panache.
These aren’t masterful unprecedented details keeping cinematographers like Maria von Hausswolff or Claire Mathon up at night. However, if you’re stuck at an Imagine Dragons concert, you’ll relish any moment things get even a tad “experimental.”
Save for containing slightly roomier wide shots than a typical Happy Madison Netflix movie, My Spy: The Eternal City is an incredibly disposable feature. It's a mystery if anyone craved a My Spy sequel for four years. If such a demo exists, they deserve a more creatively fun adventure. The trio of Eternal City screenwriters (Segal and Erich & Jon Hoeber) rigidly go through the motions of expected character and storytelling beats. Everyone is firmly coloring inside the lines, which leaves little room for exciting comedic creativity.
Whenever the screenplay tries to wring laughs out of the viewer, it's through tepid "modern" references. Extended dating app gags, Star Wars character name-drops, or Dave Bautista saying "Dua Lipa" fill your eardrums. The nadir of Eternal City's comedy is a lengthy infiltration sequence involving terrible-looking CG finches attacking J.J. and Kim. Full of screaming and broad crotch and nipple-pecking punchlines, it’s a scene browbeating audiences into laughter. The only jokes that truly work are early gags involving J.J.'s misguided but genuine desire to connect with Sophie's social circle. It's hard not to titter at Dave Bautista excitedly offering a bunch of teenagers a bag of White Claws without considering the consequences.
The deeply generic nature of My Spy: The Eternal City includes keeping up a “grand” comedy movie sequel tradition. Anchorman, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Ted, and so many other follow-ups established that all yukfest sequels must ditch the first installment's romantic interest. That norm bizarrely continues here. Sophie’s mom Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley) from the original My Spy is now working overseas in The Eternal City. Relegated to two brief appearances, Kate’s minimized Eternal City role epitomizes this comedy sequel's derivative nature.
If anyone emerges unscathed from The Eternal City, it's at least Dave Bautista. Starting with his incredibly earnest delivery of “You really think I could play the tuba?” in the film’s opening sequence, this man exudes an agreeable air that’s fun to watch. Plus, unlike either Jason Statham or Dwayne Johnson, Bautista can actually lose fights on-screen! That quality gives an extra air of believability to J.J.. Alas, the script never hands this Glass Onion veteran material worthy of his talents. Still, if anyone scores a handful of chuckles during The Eternal City’s inexplicably lengthy 111-minute runtime, it’s Bautista.
With all due respect to this talented performer, though, Dave Bautista is nowhere near enough of a reason to check out My Spy: The Eternal City. Neither is this sequel looking slightly more polished than typical streaming comedies. Like its predecessor, The Eternal City is a peculiar mixture of Disney Channel punchlines and Asylum action movies nailing neither the gags nor the punching. If you’re scouring the world for the only movie in existence to cast Flula Borg and Anna Faris just to scowl, you’ve struck gold. Otherwise, spend your time watching countless superior features hailing from Italy. Heck, just dedicate an afternoon to better recent American movies shot in Italy, like Dead Reckoning or The First Omen!