Thoughts on Spies Like Us

 

via Time

"You know, I must really like you, because I don't like horses and I hate guns!"

When I finished Spies Like Us, starring Chevy Chase and co-writer Dan Aykroyd as two bureaucrats who become U.S. government decoys, I had the sobering realization that I hadn't laughed once. I smiled, certainly, and the John Landis-directed movie kept my attention. But I just didn't find it all that funny. Maybe it's because adventure and/or caper comedies don't age that well on their own*. Maybe it's because the material doesn't seem to fit the leads that well (which is interesting, because, again, one of them wrote the darn movie). Maybe because there's a lot going on, but in the end, little of it matters.

*Gotcha! and The Goonies had coming of age elements, while Desperately Seeking Susan had its leads.

A missile launcher is discovered within the wilderness of the USSR. Emmett Fitz-Hume (Chase) and Austin Millbarge (Aykroyd) are deemed expendable by intelligence and military bigwigs (Bruce Davison, William Prince, Steve Forrest and Tom Hatten). The duo, who only met during a disastrous exam-taking session ("What does KGB stand for?"), get trained by Col. Rhombus (Bernie Casey, who I'm going to assume played a bigger role in an earlier draft) and sent to Pakistan en route to Afghanistan and the Pamir Mountains**. After tangling with two barely disguised KGB agents (Jim Staahl and James Daughton), Fitz-Hume and Millbarge meet some "doctors." They're Jerry Hadley (Charles McKeown) and the alluring Karen Boyer (Donna Dixon), who aren't the only pair with secrets.

**Face it, the audience is mostly just supposed to know that "They're in the desert!... Now they're in the cold!"

"I'm sorry I'm late, I had to attend the reading of a will. I had to stay till the very end, and I found out I received nothing. ... Broke my arm."

Spies, as probably everybody reading this knows, was intended as a salute to Hope and Crosby's "Road to ..." movies. It was also originally going to be an Aykroyd-John Belushi vehicle. I'm not going to fault Chevy for not being Belushi. I'm going to fault any of the credited writers (including Dave Thomas and Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel) and/or Landis for either not creating or keeping material to show the leads as a duo. They're not friends to begin with (like, say, Aykroyd and Belushi in The Blues Brothers or Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in Stripes), so if they become allies (like Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy in Trading Places), then I think it's important that we see the movement from Point A to Point B.

Chevy is Chevy. You either roll with him or don't. He's going to exude cocky confidence, relentlessly hit on Karen and generally come across as the brains of the operation. Dan is Dan. He's going to be the actual brains of the operation, with a heart of gold, anything for a friend attitude**. I want to judge Spies on its own merits, but it's really of most interest against other 1980s comedies. The "Ace Tomato Company" guys and the generals are a bit like four Duke brothers. I didn't find the just desserts for Sline, et. al as satisfying as Trading Places' revenge, because the heroes are on the world's other end.

**We'll say Millbarge goes to Point A 1/2.

So what does that leave us with? A longer than necessarily, slack paced movie that I just couldn't enjoy.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yeah. It's a dickfer."

"What's a dickfer?"

"To pee with."

Not Recommended.

Thoughts:
-- "A weapon unused is a useless weapon."
-- Box Office: Grossing nearly $60.1 million on a $22 million budget, this opened at No. 2 and came in at No. 10 for 1985.
-- Critic's Corner: "The entire movie seems to be some kind of in-joke," Paul Attanasio wrote. "Nobody seems to be trying. And that can be very trying indeed." A potentially funny film was "dissipated by so little sustained wit, and so much scenery," according to Janet Maslin.
-- Memorable Music: The score is 56-44, with a slightly reluctant point for "Spies Like Us" by Paul McCartney. The song peaked at No. 7 on Feb. 7, 1986.
-- Hey, It's ...!: Frank Oz, Matt Frewer, Terry Gilliam, Bob Hope, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi, B.B. King and Edwin Newman. Plus Ray Harryhausen, Michael Apted, Larry Cohen, Martin Brest and Costa-Gavras.

-- "My objective? Well, I object to taking a girl out, you know, and buying her dinner and then she won't put out for you."

-- Fanservice Junction: Heidi Sorensen as Fitz-Hume's supervisor and Vanessa Angel as the Russian girl Millbarge ends up with.

-- A few weeks prior to Spies' release, Chevy hosted SNL. The 1985-86 season was the first back for Lorne Michaels and the crew also included Franken & Davis and Michael O'Donoghue, who wrote a monologue that never made it to air. Chevy, legend has it, was for the piece, but the censors said no. 

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-censored-snl-moment.html
-- "Hard to believe it's been only 15 minutes since I destroyed the world. In another 15 minutes, it will all be over. Such a short time to destroy a world. And to think my high school guidance counselor said I'd never amount to anything."
-- Next: Young Sherlock Holmes. On deck: Clue and The Jewel of the Nile. Coming soon: Out of Africa and The Color Purple.