Alison Rowat's Review
This spy caper-cum-rom-com is supremely daft and half as funny as it should be. That said, there’s no denying the screen appeal of the three cute-as-puppies leads.
Reese Witherspoon is Lauren, the product tester dating two men (Tom Hardy and Chris Pine).
The guys are secret agents, naturally, and both use the full resources of the agency they work for to spy on each other’s dating progress.
Bubblegum for the brain.
Paul Greenwood's Review
Tom Hardy and Chris Pine are a pair of super spies and best friends, who at the start of this idiotic action comedy, are on a mission in Hong Kong.
Back in the States after the largely bungled operation, they both begin dating the same woman (Reese Witherspoon) without the other knowing it.
Hilarity is then supposed to ensue when they find this out and begin to sabotage each other using all their CIA training and gadgets to keep tabs on each other, or to garner inside info to impress her.
All surface though breezy enough in places, it’s the kind of film where events that take place early on have no bearing on things that happen later, and characters conveniently forget stuff about each other.
And never mind that Hardy and Pine are able to use the full resources of the CIA for their shenanigans, using untold dollars and manpower with no one asking questions. There’s plenty of opportunity for inconsistent and sloppy writing that barely achieves sitcom standards of depth and consequence. Indeed, you’ll probably notice similarities to several episodes of Friends, except minus the comedy or charm.
It doesn’t exactly make for a barrel of laughs, falling back frequently on the laziest of rom-com staples, like the best friend whom Witherspoon can explain the plot points to. It’s sloppily slapped together like most examples of its kind, and predictable like you wouldn’t believe.
Don’t forget they’re also still supposed to be tracking down the baddie from Hong Kong (Til Schweiger, utterly wasted), but this is completely ignored for long stretches and needn’t really exist at all except to put everyone in danger at the climax.
Much of that could probably be forgiven if the film were at least undemanding fun, or if the action were up to scratch. But it’s a mess, chaotic and poorly staged and incomprehensibly edited.
On the one hand, it’s so wilfully moronic that it deserves every bad word against it that it’s got coming.
On the other, with its likable if rather smug leads, being too harsh on it would be like kicking a brain-damaged puppy. And at least it does prove once and for all that romantic comedy and action so rarely work together.