For some reason, there seems to be a rule in Hollywood that every action hero needs to appear in at least one family-friendly comedy at some point in their career, and you can now add Dave Bautista to that list. Following in the footsteps of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Kindergarten Cop, Vin Diesel’s The Pacifier and Sylvester Stallone’s appearance in Spy Kids 3-D, the Guardians of the Galaxy star also follows in the less than illustrious footsteps of fellow wrestlers-turned-actors Hulk Hogan, Dwayne Johnson and John Cena, who ventured into the genre with Mr. Nanny, The Tooth Fairy and Playing with Fire respectively.
Directed by regular Adam Sandler collaborator and veteran of mediocre comedies Peter Segal, My Spy follows Bautista’s CIA agent through a familiar setup that eventually sees him teaming up with a 9 year-old kid to save the day, and presumably their initial hostility towards each other thaws throughout the story as they learn to work together despite their vast and obvious differences.
The movie was originally scheduled for a theatrical release last August, but ended up being delayed a further three times before it was ultimately pulled altogether and announced to be heading straight to Amazon Prime instead on June 26th. While My Spy did manage a limited run on the big screen in some international markets, and has been available for streaming in the UK since mid-March, it won’t arrive Stateside for another two weeks.
Reviews have been about as underwhelming as you would expect though for a type of story that’s already been done countless time before, with My Spy currently sitting on a Rotten Tomatoes score of 47% and a 42 on Metacritic. That being said, brand new family friendly content has been a little hard to come by during the Coronavirus pandemic, and Bautista is a charismatic enough presence to keep younger viewers occupied for a couple of hours so that parents don’t have to sit through Frozen II for the fiftieth time.