“Who asked for this?” is a criticism with the unpleasant ring of smugness: most movies are not asked for, because that’s not how movies work. But there are certainly projects for which the question is somewhat valid, ones where the intended audience feels impossibly narrow. Take My Spy The Eternal City, an action-comedy sequel premiering on Prime Video: Its ideal audience would appear to be children who were precisely 8 years old upon its predecessor’s COVID-delayed 2020 release, are now 12, and maintain unusually – perhaps even unhealthily – fond memories of My Spy, while also wishing there were a more serious and envelope-pushing follow-up. This cohort, while possibly imaginary, may be delighted by another round of CIA operative J.J. (Dave Bautista) playing father figure to Sophie (Chloe Coleman), now during a fuller espionage adventure mixing light slapstick and heavier violence. Everyone else may look upon this uneven hybrid appropriately puzzled.
The Eternal City does manage to half-cleverly build the aging of its plucky child star into the screenplay. Sophie is no longer the precocious elementary-schooler of the first film, but a snarky 14-year-old. Though J.J. has fully committed to his dual roles in her life, serving as both surrogate father and demanding trainer, Sophie isn’t so sure that learning the secret-agent ropes is still her highest priority. (Among other things, there’s a homecoming dance to think about.) In an effort to repair their relationship, J.J. volunteers to serve as a chaperone on her school choir trip to Italy, a position that the movie imagines as both impossibly daunting – at times, J.J. seems to be the only adult in charge of up to two-dozen kids, and at one point appears to be guiding their tour – and exceedingly easy to ditch when the plot requires it.
Sure enough, the plot requires it: A kidnapping leaves J.J. no choice but to bring Sophie along on his rescue mission, along with his boss David Kim (Ken Jeong) and his wacky tech guru Bobbi (Kristen Schaal). By this point, the conflict between J.J. and Sophie has become muddled beyond recognition: Is she interested in intense fieldwork, or hoping to pursue something more teen-like? Is she seeking greater autonomy, or equal secret-agent footing? For that matter, does J.J. want to protect and overparent Sophie, or have her follow in his footsteps? Director Peter Segal (Tommy Boy, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps) pivots so awkwardly between family drama, autopilot action, and zany comedy that skilled comic players like Schaal, Jeong, Craig Robinson, and Anna Faris are sometimes left to play surprisingly straight spy scenes in the confusion. Collectively, they’re better at this than you might think, but to little end beyond fitting in with the same later-period Segal style that supported the joke-light pleasantries of Second Act and Grudge Match.
Eventually, My Spy The Eternal City focuses up. It settles in on the quartet of J.J., Sophie, Bobbi, and David to drive the action in the second half, and Schaal in particular lands a few laughs with the kinds of lines that sound like tossed-off ad-libs, whether they actually are or not. Even when the movie is aiming specifically for comic asides, though, it throws in a few double entendres that belong in a much saltier production than one presumably aimed at viewers around Sophie’s age. The movie also casually invokes a nuclear-level threat to global security that feels like an overreach at best, either for an action-adventure this low-rent or a comedy this goofy, depending on the scene. Whatever’s actually supposed to be going on here, Bautista remains game, and Coleman remains a confident young performer. With their work placed alongside a wasted talent like Faris, who can be genuinely hilarious in actual comedies, My Spy The Eternal City comes across like an abuse of its actors’ trust, all in service of an audience that must exist somewhere, but is hard to picture.
