OxfordPress.com

Grade: C+

Verdict: A so-so buddy comedy.

Details: Starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson and Famke Janssen. Directed by Betty Thomas. Rated PG-13 for action violence, some sexual content, and language. 96 minutes.

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Review: I Spy shares its title with the groundbreaking 1960s television series that starred Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, but the film and TV show have little else in common.

The small-screen espionage drama, which ran from 1965 to 1968, combined cloak-and-dagger action with subtle humor. Culp and Cosby portrayed undercover agents Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott, who posed as a top-seeded tennis player and his trainer, respectively. Cosby had the distinction of being the first black performer to have a starring role on a regular dramatic series on American television.

The big-screen version stars Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson, who reverse the characters’ identities and roles. Murphy’s Robinson is the middleweight world champion, who is recruited by a jive-talking George W. Bush to provide cover for Wilson’s agent Scott. The blond-haired, blue-eyed Scott attempts to blend in with Robinson’s black entourage.

I Spy doesn’t so much recall the television series as its stars’ previous cross-cultural buddy comedies, from Murphy’s standard-setting 48 Hours to Wilson’s Shanghai Noon.

Directed by Betty Thomas, who previously did The Brady Bunch Movie and Murphy’s Dr. Dolittle, the formulaic action caper is slight, but fun. While the screenplay is credited to two writing teams, Murphy and Wilson often seem to be winging it without a script.

The plot is as insubstantial as the invisible plane that our heroes attempt to track down, but it coasts on the stars’ charm and is invigorated by their lively comedic riffing.

I Spy opens with a James Bond-inspired prologue sequence set in the snowy Uzbekistan mountains, where Scott attempts to retrieve a turncoat pilot who has sold his top-secret spy plane to nefarious European arms dealer Arnold Gundars (Malcolm McDowell). Clearly no Bond, Scott inadvertently starts an avalanche and nearly botches his mission.

The far-fetched spoof also lifts its spy-gadget testing area from the Bond films, plus it features former “Bond babe” Famke Janssen as a sexy agent with whom Scott is smitten.

Robinson and Scott are reluctantly paired by the spy agency on the eve of the former’s title bout in Budapest. There, Gundars plans to sell the invisible stealth jet to the highest bidder at a pre-fight party whose guest list is a “who’s who of international bad guys.”

Typical of such films, the smart-mouthed superstar and the gee-whiz spy can’t stand one another. But, of course, they pull together through adversity — which involves a barrage of so-so action sequences, including car chases, shootouts and explosions.

I Spy delivers some decent laughs, the best of which are drawn from Scott’s clunky, oversized gizmos and a Cyrano de Bergerac-style duet of Sexual Healing.

The film tends to drag when Murphy and Wilson’s characters are separated, but it clicks when they mix it up together. Murphy puts an aggressive spin on his sassy motor-mouth shtick, while the laconic Wilson provides cool counterpoint to his partner.

As ’60s TV-to-movie adaptations go, I Spy tops Wild Wild West and The Avengers. But as a buddy action-comedy, it’s nothing that we haven’t spied countless times before.

— Dave Larsen, Cox News Service