Dave Bautista was a wrestler, a WWE champion and mixed martial artist from the 90's to the early 2000's. Bautista started appearing in Hollywood productions in the 2010's. His biggest claim to fame is Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), which is part of a run of action films he's done. An interview he did a year or so ago, Bautista said he doesn't want to be like Dwayne Johnson where he's an action star. Bautista wants to be a serious actor. He doesn't want to be known exclusively for his physicality. His film My Spy (2020) is where his pivot began. He'll still do action films every now and then, but he's starting to pick up more roles that remove him from the action. Despite the 2020 film being released during the COVID-19 pandemic, it did relatively well, which prompted this sequel. Bautista is returning to this action-oriented film, but the underlying theme here is how much Bautista doesn't want to be an action star or really do any action any more.
Bautista stars as Jason Jones aka JJ, a former CIA agent who now works as a bodyguard. He still is involved with the agency, aiding with certain missions as an analyst, but his main job is protecting a teenage girl, the same girl from the last film, now a bit grown up. He's also all about training her to become an agent, as a way to further protect her, but probably as a way of passing the mantle because he doesn't want to do it any more. He prefers being an analyst. He likes sitting behind a desk. Running around and getting into fights are not on his bingo card any longer. It might be a function of his age or just as an athlete who has reached his peek, although Tom Cruise is in his 60's and still does action.
Chloe Coleman (65 and Marry Me) co-stars as Sophie, the daughter of a CIA director who was murdered. When that happened, JJ stepped up as a surrogate father. The previous film had her wanting to learn to be a spy and perhaps be a CIA agent herself. She was nine-years-old then. It seems as if she's 12 or 13 now, a teenager, and she doesn't want to be in the CIA any more. She's learned a lot from JJ about being a spy, but, as he wants to continue her training, she's over it. She's more interested in hanging out with her friends and pursuing a boyfriend.
Like The Edge of Seventeen (2016) and other films focusing on a teenage girl, Sophie has two options. One is a boy named Ryan Kerr, played by Billy Barratt, a member of the school choir and the resident top jock whom Sophie imagines as a pop star because he does look like he's fresh off some boy band. The other is a boy named Collin Kim, played by Taeho K, a more geeky kid who is also the child of a CIA director, but, unlike Sophie, he doesn't know it. He has a secret crush on Sophie, but she doesn't know it and thus he's been put in the friend zone. The film sets up this potential triangle. Yet, the film does nothing to develop it or make it interesting or engaging at all. It feels almost perfunctory to the narrative than anything else.
The plot really involves JJ being one of the chaperones to Sophie and her friends during their school trip to Rome, Italy, where the school choir is set to perform. JJ's job is to make sure the teenagers don't break curfew and in general keep an eye on them so they don't get into trouble. However, Sophie has learned so much of JJ's spy tricks that she thinks that she can get around him and outsmart him in order to break curfew or get into trouble willingly. The film sets up what could have been a spy vs. spy story where it's JJ versus Sophie. We get one scene where that is in fact the case, but then the film quickly abandons that dynamic.
The film devolves into a lame adventure where JJ is dragged from scene-to-scene, underlying the fact that he doesn't want to be doing action scenes. Yes, I get that the joke is meant to be this large hulking man doesn't want to do the things you'd expect a man like him can do, but it makes the action overall feel lame because that's what it is. The best action sequence is in fact the one that doesn't involve Bautista. Sophie's friend, Collin, gets kidnapped, which pulls Sophie into a plot akin to Spy Kids (2001). Director Peter Segal (Grudge Match and Get Smart) doesn't have the zany, silly and irreverent humor that Robert Rodriguez's film had, but the closest Segal's film gets is when Sophie has to fight two gay spies, Todd, played by Noah Dalton Danby, and Carlos, played by Devere Rogers. Sophie fighting Todd and Carlos felt like it was ripped right out of Spy Kids.
That fight scene came at the end of the film. If the film had scenes in that vein and tone, akin to Spy Kids, throughout or from the beginning, then this film would have been more enjoyable. Anna Faris (Mom and Scary Movie) plays Nancy, another school chaperone who is revealed to be a villain somewhere between the villains in Spy Kids and one of the James Bond villains from early in that franchise. Yet, unlike the villains in Spy Kids, Nancy isn't really a factor until the back half of the film.
Flula Borg (The Suicide Squad and Pitch Perfect 2) plays Bishop Crane, the second villain. Borg is a comedian who has been featured in magazines for his incredible physique and muscular body. Segal gives Borg a beefcake shot, but the film doesn't give him much more. There's an action sequence toward the end that does give him a chase involving the pope-mobile that's rip-off of Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018), but it was rather too little, too late.
Rated PG-13 for violence/action, some strong language, teen drinking and a nude sculpture.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 52 mins.
Available on Amazon Prime.
