“MORE REDEMPTIVE AND ENJOYABLE, BUT ALSO MARRED”
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
MY SPY: THE ETERNAL CITY is full of funny lines, fun performances and fast-paced action. The cast has several comedy stars in supporting roles, while Dave Bautista and Chloe Coleman’s terrific chemistry wins the day. The movie’s strong Christian, moral worldview features a positive father-daughter relationship, a prayer to Jesus for forgiveness, a Christian choir, and a battle between good and evil. However, MY SPY: THE ETERNAL CITY also has lots of foul language, some lewd content, strong action violence, and a scene with underage drinking. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong and extreme caution.
CONTENT:
23 obscenities (including 10 “s” words, three “d” words, two male anatomy obscenities, three a** words, two SOBs, a “b” word, and two “h” words), seven light profanities, several vulgarities, and a teenager is heard and seen vomiting after drinking too much;
Strong action violence includes lots of intense punching and kicking including a teenage girl gets punched hard by a villain, implied point blank shooting of a woman, several scenes of shooting and knife throwing that land in bodies, a villain is stabbed once to death in the heart, plenty of car chases with lots of vehicular destruction, an underage girl drives destructively in one scene, a girl first saves her father and a boy from falling from an airplane to earth, before cutting them loose as they comically keep falling in a dream sequence, a man is injected with a neurotoxin and nearly dies;
No sex scenes, but there’s a lewd inappropriate comment about part of a nude statue, a comment on how to kiss open mouthed is intended to be comical, and stepfather is worried his flawed parenting skills could result in his adopted daughter becoming a strip pole dancer;
Upper male nudity when a man is seen briefly shirtless, and some nude statues are shown;
One brief scene of underage high schoolers having a drinking party, and one teenage character gets sick;
No smoking or no depicted drug use, but someone jokes about buying meth and a man is poisoned and nearly dies; and,
A teenage girl is annoyed with her father’s strict rules before coming to respect him better than before, a teenage girl drives recklessly underage, but in a chase that is clearly her on the side of good versus evil, a homosexual male couple appears to be shown favorably, but they turn out to be villains who even hit the teenage heroine before they are brought down, a scene briefly features the dad awkwardly being asked how he’d chaperone a girl who might have her period for the first time, but it’s not tasteless, and a teenage boy is kidnapped and endangered.
MORE DETAIL:
MY SPY: THE ETERNAL CITY is the long-awaited sequel to 2020’s MY SPY. An action comedy, MY SPY featured a CIA superspy named JJ (Dave Bautista), who begins a comically contentious friendship with a 9-year-old girl named Sophie (Chloe Coleman), whose family he was following. The original was rambunctious fun that regrettably leaned too much on foul language and strong action violence to be good family fun.
Streaming on Amazon Prime, the sequel features Sophie at age 14 and taking a bigger part in the action because JJ has married her mom and is now her adoptive dad. He trains Sophie daily in all sorts of fighting and spying skills, although she wishes to be treated more like a normal girl and have a fun social life at her school. The fact that she’s a teenager now makes the movie more palatable for teenagers and adults, because it’s more fun to see her take a big part in the ample action scenes. Also, the father-daughter relationship is nicely portrayed with the two developing real respect and affection for each other. However, this MY SPY sequel still has too much foul language and some gratuitous lewd jokes.
The movie opens on a slam-bang action sequence where JJ is flying as bodyguard on a private jet owned by a teen pop music star named Ryan. The female flight attendant tries to poison JJ’s drink. When he realizes this, a high-energy fight breaks out between them with punching, kicking and comical knife-throwing, before Sophie swoops in to save JJ and Ryan in a jet-powered flying suit.
It turns out that it’s all a dream of Sophie’s. In reality, Ryan is the lead singer of her talented school choir. Sophie’s attracted to him, but he doesn’t pay much attention, while her best friend is a boy she’s known since first grade named Colin. All three children are excited to learn that their choir has been chosen to perform in a tour of Italy, with the dramatic highlight being a performance for the Pope at the Vatican.
Meanwhile, JJ is alerted by his CIA boss, David (who’s Colin’s dad), that 50 Russian mini-nukes have been stolen, and the villains behind the theft are loose in Italy. David orders JJ to chaperone the choir tour, so he can be in place to help find the bad guys and save the world from nuclear destruction.
This establishes a comic dual premise. Thus, JJ must balance being an overbearing father figure who’s constantly out to bust the choir kids for any bad behavior, with the constant danger of facing off against a ruthless hitman who keeps trying to kill him and keep him off the trail. The stakes are raised even higher when the hitman and his minions kidnap Colin, and the terrorists order David to come to Rome.
Ultimately, a surprising lead terrorist is revealed, and they threaten to detonate a nuke under the Vatican during the choir’s performance. Can JJ save the world and the young students? Can Sophie put her action training to good use in teaming with her stepdad? And, will she ever realize that Colin’s secretly in love with her?
MY SPY: THE ETERNAL CITY is one of the most entertaining movies of the year. It’s packed with impressive action scenes and plenty of funny lines. The cast is stacked with veteran comic actors who bring an extra zest to the proceedings. Meanwhile, Director/Co-writer Peter Segal keeps everything moving at a zippy pace and plenty of beautiful locations.
The score is unexpectedly superb, blending classic Italian pop songs with splashes of opera, beautiful choral numbers of holy Christian songs, and excellent original orchestration. Bautista and Coleman are even better together than in the first movie, since she’s able to have a more multilayered performance to Sophie, and he’s developed a screen persona that’s both lovable and tough. In one key scene, he prays to Jesus for forgiveness before he has to battle a villain. Eventually, he and Sophie become closer as they save the world together.
Sadly, however, MY SPY: THE ETERNAL CITY still has some moral downsides. Many fight scenes feature intense punching and kicking. Also, frequent foul language and lewd comments are scattered throughout the movie. Finally, the teenagers are briefly seen having a wild drinking party. Consequently, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.
Overall, though, MY SPY: THE ETERNAL CITY is very enjoyable, with a constantly engaging mix of laughs, thrills and heart. The positive father-daughter relationship is inspiring.