I Spy With My Little Eye Just Another Eddie Murphy Movie
When a stealth fighter is stolen secret agent Alex Scott (Owen Wilson) is sent on a mission to retrieve it from underground arms dealer Arnold Gundars (Malcolm McDowell) but fails due to his slightly accident prone ways. It is why back at HQ he finds himself assigned a partner to assist him, that is cocky boxing champion Kelly Robinson (Eddie Murphy) who is personally asked by the President to help as Gundars is a huge boxing fan. The trouble is that Alex and Kelly are like chalk n' cheese leading to more than a few issues.
You often here people say that a movie is little more than a vehicle to showcase an actors talents and if you ever wondered what that means just find a copy of "I Spy" the 2002 movie starring Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson and you will see what I mean. But as is often the case movies which are little more than a showcase for an actor are not very good and that is certainly the case of "I Spy" which with its set up of chalk n' cheese buddies seems a tired idea from beginning to end and ends up becoming one of those movies you don't pay a great deal of attention to because nothing in it is new.
So to break it down there is the story which is pretty much pointless because it is unimportant. Yes we have an underground arms dealer and a missing plane but it could have been about anything as it is only a vehicle to give us another odd couple pairing. It is why I said that "I Spy" isn't the sort of movie which you sit glued to because it's easy to think of so many odd couple movies which are similar to this. And to be really frank the comedy of this odd couple is as tired as it comes with one dumb joke after another which most of has a sense of Deja vu to.
But that leads me to what is the movie's biggest issue as whilst it stars Owen Wilson and many other familiar faces including Malcolm McDowell in another bad guy role all it really is is a vehicle to showcase Eddie Murphy's talents. But sadly what Murphy brings to the movie is the same thing he was doing 15 years earlier with being loud, cocky and talking a lot. It almost feels like you are transported back in time to a decade or more earlier.
What this all boils down to it is that "I Spy" is just another movie which reworks themes, set ups and even jokes which have been done many times before. Maybe for a young teen it might amuse but for many its lack of originality and general familiarity will make it pointless.
