When authors run amok

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, February 2nd, 2024. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new spy comedy hits theaters this weekend. Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino to talk about Argylle.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Movie fans sometimes call the months of January and February “Dumpuary.” It’s the time of year that Hollywood dumps bad movies into theaters hoping they’ll disappear without attracting too much attention. January lived up to the nickname this year, but will Argylle, the new spy movie debuting today, buck the trend?

LAGRANGE: You and I. We’re not so different.

ARGYLLE: You’re a terrorist.

LAGRANGE: Then what, Agent Argylle, does that make you?

Argylle, spelled with two Ls, is a bit of a meta movie. You see, the movie’s namesake, Agent Argylle, isn’t a real spy. He’s the fictional creation of the film’s heroine, Elly Conway, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Elly’s first four books featuring the omnicompetent Argylle turned into bestsellers, and her fans are eagerly waiting for book five. But the timid and high-strung Elly is having trouble coming up with an ending for her latest installment.

RUTH: The book is phenomenal, sweetie, but what happens next?

ELLY: It’s called a cliffhanger, mother.

RUTH: Elly, it’s called a cop-out.

The ending to that story will have to wait because Elly’s writing gets put on hold, when real-life spies attack her on a train. A friendly spy, played by Sam Rockwell, rescues her, and tells her she’s spooked the spooks. It turns out, the plots of her novels sound too much like the real-life goings on of a shadowy spy network called the Division.

AIDAN: What you wrote in your new book actually happened, and you kicked a hornet’s nest you didn’t even know existed.

Elly’s adventure into the world of espionage keeps getting interrupted by mental flashes of her fictional world, in which Argylle and his best friend Wyatt attempt to solve similar problems. Henry Cavill and John Cena ham it up as Argylle and Wyatt.

ARGYLLE: Who told you that we were coming? Who?

WYATT: You don’t answer, you’re going to be the same temperature as my coffee right now, which thanks to you is ice cold.

It’s hard not to compare this action-comedy spy-thriller with The Lost City, Sandra Bullock’s action-comedy romance from 2022. Both feature meta stories involving reclusive authors who write adventure novels that turn out to be too close to the truth. Both are very silly. And they both involve recurring gags involving accessory items. Sandra Bullock spends much of her film worrying about a borrowed sequin jumpsuit. Bryce Dallas Howard is preoccupied with her cat who spends most of the movie in a custom-made backpack.

AIDAN: Had to bring the cat.

ELLY: What did you expect me to do? Leave him to fend for himself? Come on.

AIDAN: He’d be fine. Cat ladies always die alone. Cats figure it out.

ELLY: I am not a cat lady. I’m not!

Argylle is directed by Matthew Vaughn. He’s the same guy responsible for the Kingsman franchise, another series of spy comedies. And you can see his fingerprints all over this film. Argylle has Vaughn’s signature silliness coupled with overly stylish action sequences. But though the Kingsman movies were all rated R, Vaughn restrains himself in this PG-13 film. The bodycount starts to pile up by the end, but Vaughn doesn’t revel in the violence this time, and the bad language sticks to the middle of the road for a PG-13 movie.

Argylle might be stylish and have plenty of funny scenes, but the movie never really comes together. Vaughn wants to subvert and poke fun at the classic spy movie, but the script he’s working from isn’t quite clever enough to pull it off. The film starts out strong, and it contains some pretty surprising plot twists. But after a while, you realize these twists and turns aren’t going anywhere.

AUDIO: [Fighting sounds]

The overly choreographed fight scenes might distract you from the plot holes at first, but once you stop to think about it, you’ll realize none of this story makes much sense.

The actions of the bad guys—and really the good guys, for that matter—don’t quite add up. There’s also a lack of moral clarity. You could argue that’s a typical feature of the spy genre, but in this case it doesn’t feel intentional. It just feels like bad writing.

To make matters worse, at 2 hours and 20 minutes, the movie goes on much too long. And the longer the movie goes, the more preposterous it gets. One particularly silly action sequence toward the end should have never made the final cut. This light-weight action comedy needs to be at least 40 minutes shorter.

With this fragile plot, it’s no wonder the marketing campaign is relying on celebrity cameos that take up just a few minutes of screentime. Fans of Dua Lipa and Samuel L. Jackson certainly won’t feel like they got their money’s worth.

ALFIE: It’s time for you to meet the real Agent Argylle.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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