My Spy: The Eternal City movie review | 'A rather forgettable sequel'

Now four years later we get the sequel which takes the story into a darker dimension

Film: My Spy: The Eternal City 
Cast: Dave Bautista, Chloe Coleman, Kristen Schaal, Ken Jeong, Anna Faris, Billy Barratt, Taeho K, Flula Borg
Director: Peter Segal
Rating: 2/5
Runtime: 112 min

2020’s “My Spy” was a welcome diversion during the pandemic. The film was amusing enough with its subversive family-friendly, action-comedy fare. Dave Bautista and Chloe Coleman played off well against each other and Kristen Schaal was effective as the weird sidekick. Now four years later we get the sequel which takes the story into a darker dimension.

JJ (Dave Batuista) , once a field operative for the CIA, has resigned himself to sitting behind a desk as an analyst. His protege, 14 year old freshman Sophie (Chloe Coleman) gets a chance to sing in the school choir at the Vatican and he agrees to escort her there. A survivor of five tours of duty as an Army Ranger, he figures being a chaperone for a choir tour would be child’s play. But it's not…

The exposition tries to explain how Sophie’s Mom, who is a nurse, had to travel to Rwanda for work, therefore JJ was left with the task of taking Sophie to Italy. Sophie, once welcomed spending time with her guardian but now feels too embarrassed by the constant monitoring. JJ soon learns how difficult it is to control a group of teens. So ‘Daddy’ issues are part of the equation here. JJ overcompensates by using his CIA tech to keep an eye on the kids as they begin their tour. And the CIA trained killer who is now happily making scones, is drawn back into global intrigue when a flash drive containing the whereabouts of 100 nuclear warheads is stolen by Crane (Flula Borg), a top assassin who has also kidnapped Colin (Taeho K), Sophie’s classmate, the son of Director Kim (Ken Jeong).

The humor in the situations doesn't come through well enough to score laughs. The writing is pedestrian, the tone is inconsistent and the performances fail to score. 

Bautista and Coleman’s back-and-forth with each other had potential but there’s too little of it to score laughs. . Director Pete Segal, and co-writers Erich and Jon Hoeber, fail to develop the story to generate entertainment. There’s a lot of violence and adult humor here to make it inappropriate for universal viewing. Italian locations, car chases, fight break outs, a G7 gathering in peril - fail to add fuel to the fire.  In fact the churn from violence to sentimentality leaves little room for fun.

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