Argylle had a lot going for it, from a proven director, talented cast, and an interesting premise of an author’s spy novels somehow mirroring real-life events. Despite it being an Apple TV+ movie, I was willing to forget that Apple’s last big movie Napoleon also had a proven director, talented cast, and an interesting premise, but ended up winning my coveted “Worst Historical Movie with a Surprising Amount of Sexy Time” award (review and full awards here!). After a promising trailer, I still went into Argylle with a bit of hype, and guess what, it’s an even bigger waste of time than Napoleon. Argylle is another mishandling of resources with a script so bafflingly bad that halfway through the movie I started wondering if it had been written by A.I.
Even if the screenplay wasn’t first-draft quality, it would still be disappointing how little most of the top-billed cast are actually in the story. Despite the big, crowd-pleasing names in the trailer and official posters, 90% of the film follows Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell, who are fine actors but sorely lack chemistry together here. I couldn’t help but wonder if budget concerns kept John Cena and Samuel L. Jackson to nearly cameo roles that could have been knocked out filming over a weekend. Even Henry Cavill, who plays the titular Argylle, is firmly a side character. And Ariana DeBose (who starred in last week’s I.S.S.) plays a character so forgettable that the movie forgets to give her any screentime. To top it off, Dua Lipa, featured very prominently in Argylle’s marketing, sticks around for less time than a Taco Bell meal in my digestive system.
The greatest sin of the movie is that it tries to be funny and clever but fails at both. And it tries really hard, with uninspired jokes and unfunny quips continually sent out to die like the movie’s disposable henchmen. The sequences inside of Elly Conway’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) Argylle novels are over-the-top parodies of James Bond, but the satire doesn’t work because the “real-world” action scenes with Elly are even more cartoonish to the point of cringey. I’ve never clicked with Bryce Dallas Howard’s comedic delivery, but even Dave Chapelle couldn’t have pulled a laugh out of this dismal writing. Sight gags with Elly’s cat flying through the air or looking out of his submarine window backpack were the only consistently funny moments, but you’ve probably already seen them all in the trailer. It also doesn’t help that Samuel L. Jackson’s trademark outrageous delivery and John Cena’s “big funny man” humor are MIA with the duo’s lack of screentime.
Argylle starts as a winking parody of the ridiculousness of spy films but spirals into bland stupidity with each improbable plot twist. The problem is these twists are both super dumb and played earnestly, but not in an Airplane sort of way with deadpan comedy. These twists are trying super hard to get an emotional reaction that simply isn’t earned. It’s hard to describe, but Argylle comes across as thinking its twists are both dumb and smart, as if cliché plot twists translate to ironic wit. The mid-credits sequence topped it off by being completely underwhelming, and that’s saying something in a world of Marvel mid-credit Harry Styles teasers.
Afterwards, nobody in my party was talking about plot twists, only about how the movie could have easily been 20-30 minutes shorter. It’s still surprising to me just how blah the film was, since director Matthew Vaughn has quite a few blockbusters under his belt, from Kingsman, Kick-Ass, and X-Men: First Class. With a few more script edits and some tonal consistency, this could have been a more entertaining movie, but most of the laughs in my theater sounded more like sympathy chuckles. We may never know if it was too much studio meddling or too little, but Argylle is like an off-brand Lego set in pretty wrapping paper- initially promising, but the random pieces don’t fit together quite right, and the best character minifigures are missing.
Jason Talks Movies 