Spy

New rules for spy comedies: Leads not only have to know how to take a punch but how to drop kick their egos into next week -- all while laying waste to propriety and skewering their opponents -- and the audience -- with deliciously delirious doses of profanity. Paul Feig's secret weapon in his latest film Spy is the irresistible Melissa McCarthy, who, as the film's poster suggests, is Hollywood gold. Feig directed McCarthy in two solid gold bonanzas -- Bridesmaids and The Heat. Spy is far better than those movies, classier and crasser and another guaranteed pay day for all involved -- Feig, McCarthy, costars Jason Statham, Rose Byrne and Jude Law and 50 Cent, who makes an odd and less-than-inspired cameo appearance near the film's end. In this dense (in all senses of the word), globetrotting movie, McCarthy plays a CIA in-office agent, the full-figured and underappreciated Susan Cooper, who is brains to Law's field agent Bradley Fine's charming brawn. When maniacal fashionista Bulgarian brat Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne of Neighbors) gets her hands on a nuke retrieved from her murdered arms-dealer daddy, Cooper is dispatched to track her because all of the top-tier field agents have been made. Therein lies the core of this grizzled and grisly fish out of water tale -- Cooper tries to break bad and earn the cred she needs to win the respect of her ballsy unit chief (Allison Janney) and avenge Fine's untimely off-camera death. The road leads not only to Rome but to Paris and Budapest and each stop involves a hilarious change in identity and a bloody encounter with another bungling agent. The body count is high but the corpses are overshadowed by the gags and eclipsed by McCarthy's outrageous charm. Recommended.