I Spy

Starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson and Famke Janssen

Directed by…

I Spy

Starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson and Famke Janssen

Directed by Betty Thomas

“I Spy,” the new Sony Pictures comedy starring Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson, takes its name and its premise from an early 1960s television show of the same title. A show that took its title from a child’s rhyming game of the same name. It is this rhyme in fact that may best sum up “I Spy.”

Riddle, riddle, rumpty, ree, I spy something that you can’t see, and that something is …

Give up?

It’s the end of Eddie Murphy’s career.

This is not to say that “I Spy” is a terrible movie; only that after “The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” “Showtime,” “Dr. Dolittle 2,” “The Nutty Professor 2,” and now “I Spy,” one has to wonder where Murphy is going with his career. I guess the old saying is true: Once you’ve been stopped by the police with a transvestite hooker in your front seat, life is never the same.

Anyway, onto the film.

Directed by Betty Thomas, who also helmed the Howard Stern self-love fest “Private Parts,” “I Spy” follows the misadventures of bumbling super spy Alex Scott (Owen Wilson) as he is forced to team up, and inevitably save the world with undefeated boxing champion Kelly Robinson (Murphy). Wilson and Murphy travel across the globe to Budapest, Hungary where they must recover a stolen hi-tech stealth jet before generic villain No. 1 can sell it to generic bad guy No. 2 who plans to use it as a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction. Of course, things don’t go as planned and supposed hilarity ensues.

I say “supposed” because while “I Spy” tries really, really, really hard to be a witty, sarcastic parody of the super spy genre it comes off as a paltry rehash of the buddy comedy formula on which Murphy has based so much of his career. While many of the jokes fall flat, and the picture drags in parts as it attempts to stretch out its wafer-thin plot, it is apparent that both Murphy and Wilson really enjoy working together, as their parrying is both comfortable and at times amusing. And the jokes that do get a laugh, do so mainly out of Wilson’s impeccable ironic delivery. Murphy has his moment though, which is a hilarious phone conversation with George W. Bush.

Supporting the two stars are Malcolm McDowell in a this-guy-used-to-be-so-cool-so-what-the-hell-happened throwaway performance as the villain, and former Bond girl turned X-Woman Famke Janssen, who is not everything she appears to be, and not as much as you would hope.

“I Spy” certainly won’t be the last movie Murphy ever makes, given that “Shrek 2” is on the way, along with the inevitable third fat suit movie. Though, considering the tremendous downslide he has taken in recent years, it looks like Murphy’s best years are behind him. At least Wilson has Wes Anderson and Jackie Chan to fall back on.