Apr 7, 2020

"The Spy Who Dumped Me": I'll Bet You Can't Find the Gay Character

With an opening shot like this  -- a half-naked hunkoid and his boyfriend watching Alf in Russian -- I'm already hooked on The Spy Who Dumped Me.

Besides, I love movies and tv shos about civilians who are accidentally drawn into spy capers, and it will be a nice change of pace from the endless post-Apocalyptic zombie-fighting.


Audrey (Mila Kunis of That 70s Show and American Dad)  isn't really dumped by her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux).  He sort of ghosts her, so she dumps him via a text message.  Then he shows up, explains that he's a spy, and is murdered, but not before he tells her to bring the  maguffin (a fantasy football trophy) to a cafe in Vienna.

And the caper is on. Audrey and her best friend Morgan (Kate McKinnon) go to Vienna, then Prague, then Amsterdam, then Berlin (location shots in all of them, except Budapest filled in for Prague).

On the way, they encounter many more hunkoids.



1. CIA Operative Sebastian (Sam Heughan, left), an enemy turned friend, and Audrey's love interest.

2. His partner Duffy (Hasan Minaj), a friend turned enemy.

3. Family friend Roger (Fred Melamed), who is not family friend Roger.

4. Drew's Dad (James Fleet). Or is he?

5. Master spy Edward Snowden (Tom Stourton)

After a wild ride of crosses and double-crosses and things that aren't how they seem, we end up with the world saved and Audrey and Morgan waiting for their next spy assignment.

By the way, this sounds like a comedy, but it isn't.

But it beats zombies.

Beefcake: None.  Only the guy in the first scene,a nd I can't even find him in the credits.

Other Scenery: Quite a lot of establishing shots and street scenes in the European cities.

Gay Characters: Morgan is a lesbian.

Wait?  Where....? Oh, she doesn't say or do anything that would identify her as a lesbian. She's dumbledored in:  "She's playing the character as queer.  We don't need to say so.  Gay people don't go around announcing it all the time, right?"

I agree that most gay people don't announce it every second, and rarely do things that would explicitly identify them as gay.  But -- and this is a big but -- in mass media, heterosexual audiences go by the "not wearing a sign" rule: if there is any possibility, however unlikely, that the character can be read a straight,they cannot be gay.  So Morgan's gayness is going to be erased unless she says or does something that identifies her as gay.  And she doesn't.

My grade:  It was going to be a B, but making a character gay and then closeting her is a giant slap in the face.  D.

1 comment:

  1. I've actually never watched The Spy Who Dumped Me. Guess it didn't attract me enough. Maybe I should re-think it in the near future.

    ReplyDelete

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