My Spy 2020

      A hardened CIA operative and former US Special Forces soldier and his partner set up surveillance of an apartment in Chicago.  JJ was sent on his first major mission to bust an illegal weapons-grade plutonium trade between the Russian mafia and a Middle East terrorist.  Since he botched this mission, he’s been downgraded to an easy spy mission.  JJ and Bobbi don’t know they may have met their match in a 9-year-old girl living in the apartment??

     There is a LOT of action in the beginning scenes with the mission gone wrong.  Many offensive weaponry, explosions and car destructions.  This film is targeted to tweens but it has more strong language than you might expect and the violence is also too intense for younger kids.  Scenes of shoot-outs, deaths, stabbings, attacks, threats, explosions and a child in danger.  There are good aspects with themes of courage, communication and teamwork.  But, some characters lie to each other instead of telling the truth and occasionally there are darker jokes.  I thought I would HATE this movie but that was not the case!!  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)  

  
99 min, action directed by Peter Segal and within by Erich and Jon Hoeber with Dave Bautista, Chile Coleman, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Kristen Schaal, Greg Bryk, Ken Jeong, Nicola Correia-Damude, Devere Rogers, Noah DaltonDanby, Vieslav Krystyan, Basel Daoud, Ali Hassan.

Note:  Imdb 6.3* out of 10* with 20,352 reviews, Rotten Tomatoes 47% with 119 critics 49% with 839 audience scores, Metacritic 46 out of 100 with 20 critics 6 out of 10 with 26 user scores, Roger Ebert 2 1/2* Christy Lemire, Common Sense Media Sandie Angulo Chen, 3* out of 5*, age 10+, 3* positive, role models, violence, language, 2* sex, 2* consumerism, 1* drinking, drugs smoking 1*, Amazon 3.9* with 23 reviews, empire online 2* out of 3*, Letterboxd 2.7* out of 5*, The Guardian 2* out of 5* Mike McCahill.

Special Note:  This film supposedly takes place in Chicago but most of the filming was shot in Toronto Canada.  The scene inside the dinosaur museum is the Royal Ontario Museum in downtown Toronto.  The fountain with dog statues is supposed to be in Paris but it is located in Berczy Park, Toronto Canada.  It was placed in the park in 2017 and it features 27 cast iron dogs, one cat and a large bone!!  It is unique and unusual!!

  
Mistakes:  When JJ & Sophie are eating ice cream, Sophie’s ice cream is orange.  When the elevator opens, her ice cream is pink?  In the final scene at CIA Headquarters, the photo on the ID badge of the female CIA executive Christina disappears and re-appears between shots.  JJ tunes a car radio to multiple FM stations in Chernobyl.  There are no FM stations that can be broadcast into Chernobyl with clarity?  Also, why would a radio station broadcast to an unpopulated area of this size?  The land in this area is known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and it extends 1,000 square miles.