My Spy (Dir Peter Segal, 1h 39m)

The "comedy action film with kids" has practically become a perquisite for action movie stars. "Sure", your agent tells you, "you can do your own stunts, fight a dozen henchmen, flip a car, and have enough smouldering intensity to win over your love interest and the girlfriends/wives of the men in the audience. But can you do it whilst exchanging witty banter with a child actor and holding up a paper-thin "I have to go undercover in a nursery/playschool/school/holiday camp" premise?” This is, after all the cinematic premise that gave us such cinematic masterpieces as Mr Nanny, Are We There Yet, The Pacifier, The Spy Next Door, and, bluntly, half of Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1990s output, (and an increasing chunk of Dwayne Johnson's recent output), wherein cinematic tough guys had to share their sensitive side in godawful comedies with bad child actors.

Step forward My Spy, starring the newest entrant to this oh so exclusive club, Dave Bautista. Like Johnson and his contemporary, likable walking meme, John Cena, Bautista is a wrestler turned actor, and like both of his peers, the film plays up his tough guy exterior and physique as much for the admittedly impressive action sequences as for laughs. Bautista's JJ is a former special ops soldier turned somewhat successful CIA agent, he has a sensitive side, an out of the picture former fiancé, and a troubled past. Having bungled the capture of shadowy and nefarious terrorists, he's paired with nerdy and surprisingly needy CIA tech Bobbi (Kristen Schaal), and sent off to observe the widow of the brother of notorious arms dealer and terrorist Marquez (an underused Greg Bryk).

With JJ and Bobbi settling into surveillance, their cover is promptly blown by Sophie (Chloe Coleman), whose mother is busy and distant, her father dead, presumably at the hands of his brother or other criminal forces, and left friendless and lonely by her mother uprooting from Paris to Chicago. Striking a deal with JJ to first act as surrogate parent, slowly making her popular, with JJ's appearance at her school making her popular with the previously snobby clique (and, inevitably with their mothers), so the duo eventually strike a bargain to train her as a spy, whilst JJ becomes closer with Sophie's mother (an equally underused Parisa Fitz-Henley)

And here the problems begin. Tonally, the film is a mess, unsure of what exactly it wants its audience to be, from its plot involving remarkably seriously taken terrorists who threaten to build a nuclear bomb, remarkably violent action scenes, including full blown gunfights, buttressing up against goofy moments involving school bullies getting their comeuppance, shoehorned in film references, baffling music choices, and a genuinely head scratching moment in which a secondary duo of villains are introduced, battled, and removed within a minute and a half, happening so fast it's practically a cinematic cut-away gag.

Certainly, when one compares it to the films it clearly emulates, a problem begins to emerge; these kind of kid-centric-buddy-cop movies either skew high, such as in the case of Kindergarten Cop, to play with the action movie chops of an actor like Willis or Schwarzenegger, or deliberately skew low, so that their audience finds an action movie surrogate in the child starring in the film and getting involved in wacky hijinks, such as Mr Nanny or The Pacifier. My Spy is slap in the middle, and feels like it's trying to be both at once, to mixed results. Part of this is down to Bautista himself. Compared to, for example, the classic action movie stars that have taken up this strange mantle before him, he doesn't have the idea that he is somehow making a film "for the kids" to hamstring him in this film, nor does he have to prove himself as capable of being fun-after all, countless children and teenagers know him as Drax, of the Marvel films, which prove he has a fearsome set of comedic chops.

In places, this works perfectly-his scenes with Coleman and Schaal are genuinely funny at points, his chemistry with Fitz-Henley is nicely done, when it appears at all, and the buddy duo at the centre of the film, of smart-alec kid and tough defensive former soldier is, if by the book, at least fun when it's not hamstrung by either spy-stuff, or the film's overly serious plot. Elsewhere, JJ seems lost, the performance inconsistent, the friendship between him and Sophie either under-or-overplayed, as the plot demands, with the tough resourceful soldier part of this persona never really working as well as it should do. Sophie, meanwhile, whilst a fun foil to JJ, seems herself to be a character either surprisingly calculating or utterly helpless, a girl that manages to invite herself into strangers houses to prove her skill as a spy to JJ, only to have huge issues making friends without colossal muscle in tow. The supporting cast, in particular Bobbi, barely seem to get screentime except when the plot dictates, and the sudden streak of toughness from the tech as the film slides towards its finale comes out of nowhere and feels jarring.

There are glimmers of something that could have played to either pole of the film better; The film's Russian-set opening, complete with Bautista trying a cod-Russian accent, Red Army choir-ing and JJ wandering through what seems like an entire army of footsoldiers to interrupt a deal to supply a terrorist with plutonium promises much but this sense of fun doesn't return till the last 20 minutes, where the film finally manages to capture what it's been trying its entire runtime to do, and delivers an action packed and surprisingly taut (for a PG-13 rated kids film) finale. Elsewhere, the comedy ebbs and flows, the film torn between being a tough if fun action movie, or a pure kids flick into which spy themed adventures occasionally intrude.

My Spy is not as bad as it could have been. The careers of dozens of action stars are littered with terrible kids films, some of them practically career ending, few of them memorable, some of them a blot on an otherwise superb career of being a tough paragon of action cinema. My Spy is simply inconsistent, a tonally weird action comedy that somehow plays to neither of Bautista's strengths, and through which only glimmers of his comedic ability and his action movie skill glint.

Rating: Neutral