Quick Synopsis: JJ (A “very noticeable for a spy” Batista) reunites with Sophie (Chloe Coleman), accompanying her on her school trip where they find themselves at the centre of a terrorist plot.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a normal reviewer; I don’t put definitive star ratings at the end of reviews for one thing. I will always admit that personal bias counts for a lot, sometimes negatively (I am predisposed to dislike anything with certain actors in), sometimes positively. My review of Hereditary was (I assume) the only review of that movie to include the phrase “cocking shit fuck” (unlike reviews of Morbius, which were fucking littered with that phrase, especially the one in the Holy Jesus Mary Church Weekly newsletter). On the plus side, that does mean there are lower expectations of me to maintain professional standards. As such, the following sentence won’t harm my reputation among readers as much as if it was said by someone like Peter Bradshaw (who only uses professional review lines, like in Twisters where he said “Certainly, the twister here is an obvious symbol for orgasm”). Here goes, the sentence which would doom me if I was a professional:

I stopped paying attention before this movie ended.

I watched this at home, but there weren’t any active distractions (local building work etc). I just…I just found myself watching but taking nothing in. When I speak of Come True, I often find myself talking about how despite watching it on a small screen, in my memory, it’s on a big one. With this? I will remember I watched it on my TV, not the cinema. It never felt big enough to be worthy of anything except “straight to streaming”. That’s a shame as I enjoyed the first one, and My Spy: The Eternal City (or MS: TEC, pronounced Ms. Tech) actually soured my memory of it. It assumes I can remember much more from the first one than I can. Characters turn up and the film is like “OMG it’s you guys”, whereas the audience’s reaction is “Who the fuck are these guys?”. I don’t want films overrun with flashbacks, but a few of them might have been helpful. It would be easy to do too; just frame it as Sophie giving a presentation in class or something. It would definitely be better than the current opening; a dream sequence. Never open an action movie with a dream sequence, it sets up action setpieces that can’t be recreated in reality.

Other scenes are similarly misjudged. The biggest misstep is when JJ is being tortured and threatened with death. I don’t know if it’s the way it’s shot, the way it’s written, or even just where it is in the script, but it’s devoid of any tension. I doubt a single person who watches this believed for a second that that scene would be where the character dies, even the stupid people watching it would realise that was never going to happen.

Another issue is how it wastes the location’ Venice is cinematic, but you would not know that from watching this. It could take place in any European city and it wouldn’t require that many changes. It’s a shame as I really enjoyed the first movie, and this feels like a massive step down.

MS. TECH isn’t all negative though. The cast has good chemistry, and Anna Farris is clearly having a lot of fun. There are some genuinely funny moments, especially when someone is getting stone dicks thrown at their face. Taeho K doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page but shows fantastic promise in the small moments he’s given.

Finally, and much more importantly; it’s great to hear an Ashnikko song in a film. Love that shit.