Aaah the 80s, where the concept of two guys being given a job that they shouldn’t have been given is hilarious. You just wouldn’t see that kind of stuff nowadays… What’s that? EVERY Will Ferrell film you say? Well I never thought of it that way.
So many years, in some ways so little progress.
Emmett (Chevy Chase) and Austin (Dan Ackroyd) are quite the pair. One is a code cracking genius too valuable for his boss to allow a promotion. The other is a bumbling idiot. Both are ultimately disposable though, and neither physically ready for the demands of working in the field.
This changes though when a CIA security breach means no one can be trusted, and the pair are sent out as decoys, incompetent birds with broken wings, with the aim of hopefully living long enough for the real code couriers to arrive at their destination.
After the obligatory ‘these guys couldn’t even handle basic training’ montage the heroes are thrust behind enemy lines in Pakistan, a land rife with corruption and full of bad guys only too happy to take the life of any foreigners silly enough to wander into the wrong area.
Dan Ackroyd does his smug ‘almost but not quite smart enough’ guy thing, and Chevy Chase allows his big mouth to alternately get him into and out of trouble. There are numerous jokes that may elicit a few snorts and chuckles, but the film lacks that one knockout scene that ensures you will remember it. To be dubbed legend, a comedy must first make you laugh so hard that your sides hurt.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. Alas there are no ‘sides near bust’ in Spies like Us.