This is a pretty funny buddy/action comedy vaguely along the same lines as Spy, but like a buddy version of it. I must admit I had zero interest in this movie and found myself laughing a lot and quite enjoying it.

Kunis and McKinnon have pretty good chemistry and their relationship seems very believable. As Theroux’s character says, McKinnon’s character can be a little much, and not all of her outlandish behaviour works as well, but you never really doubt Kunis’ character’s affection for her friend which makes it easier to handle McKinnon’s performances (most of the time) even when it’s not working as well as it could on the laughs front.

There are some very good gags in this film, the funniest of which (for me) involves two people close in age to me confronting a stick shift. For whatever reason, this hit home and I laughed so hard I was almost crying. There are a few other moments in the film where I laughed nearly this hard.

I would say the consistency of the laughs really isn’t on the that level. There are definitely sections of the film that have more chuckles or “Ha, that’s funny” moments than laugh-out-loud moments and I could have done with a little more humour in the film’s weakest moments. But maybe those gags just didn’t work for me.

My bigger nitpick is some of the loose ends of the film. The film is absolutely not concerned with the motivations of its characters regarding the MacGuffin and it doesn’t really seem to think we should care either. I would have liked them to be a bit more explicit about this as it’s not really clear what Theroux’s character arc and motivations are. If this is meant to be a parody of the spy genre, it’s not clear enough (to me). I think it’s more likely that the film is more interested in the three main characters and the laughs than it is in the plot.

But I otherwise quite enjoyed it and laughed much more than I thought I would, especially at the opening, which I didn’t find as funny as much of the rest of the film.

7/10