Awesome Movie Review: Spymate

2. a. Inspiring dread or reverence; awe-inspiring; terrible, formidable; awful; to be dreaded.
3. In a weakened sense, applied to objects exciting fear or aversion. In mod. colloquial use often a strong intensive = Exceedingly bad, great long, etc. Cf. awful, horrid.

That’s how the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘dreadful’. Both definitions apply to the dreadful film Spymate. Spymate is an abomination. It tries to pass of a horrific plot (a highly trained monkey is a secret agent who saves the world from evil scientist Richard Kind(Richard Kind?)) as a cute family film. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spymate sugar coats the greatest threat modern civilization faces: violent monkeys.

In the opening scene, we see Minkey rescue his human partner from the clutches of Arabian terrorists. Minkey is armed with a sword, bombs and a motorized hang-glider. Yet strangely, no one is running around saying, “Oh my God! There’s a heavily armed monkey and he’s airborne!” No, we supposed to enjoy the way Minkey murders humans and makes a clean getaway. It’s supposed to be heroic. Well, I say there’s nothing heroic about a monkey with a sword. Even a trio of dutch bears would be no match for a monkey with a sword.

As Spymate progresses, we begin to see the horrors of a world where monkeys work as government agents. When Minkey goes to Jamaica, looking for a wax-lipped scientist who might have information about evil scientist Richard Kind, he wears a tropical print shirt and dances to reggae music as he bashes Richard Kind’s albino thug over the head with a coconut. And no one blinks an eye. I’ll admit I’ve never been to Jamaica, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t all sorts of monkeys in floral print shirts dancing to reggae music and assaulting albino henchmen. You’d think someone would question it. I realize the albino henchman is dangerous, as he once wielded a magic stick that made two Xanders, but monkeys should not be fighting our battles. Mike, Minkey’s human partner, needs to stand up for himself, not lounge around of the beach with a wax-lipped scientist while a monkey kicks albino ass for him. It’s disgraceful and cowardly and it’s just what the monkeys want. While Minkey fights and becomes stronger and more resourceful, Mike becomes weak and helpless, to the point where the albino henchman captures him and takes him and the wax-lipped scientist to Richard Kind’s volcano lair.

While Mike is trapped and tied to a chair, awaiting his eventual death at the hands of the albino henchman, Minkey is in the mountains of Japan, training with ninja master Pat Morita. Seriously, Pat Morita is a ninja and he helps train the monkey. There’s also a completely unnecessary subplot involving four circus freaks, but I’m not going to waste any time with that. So Pat Morita is training the monkey, to the point where the monkey kicks Pat Morita’s ass. It’s a terrifying sequence, watching a human master of martial arts succumb to the crotch-pummeling antics of a dirty little monkey. Then, to add insult to injury, we see Pat Morita praying before a statue of a monkey. In the bizarre dystopia of Spymate, monkeys are objects of awe and reverence, even when they’ve just finished punching you repeatedly in the crotch. That fucking sickens me.

In the end, Mike, Minkey, Pat Morita and his ninjas foil Richard Kind’s evil plot to solve the world’s energy needs, rescue Mike’s daughter and make a daring getaway down the mountainside. Mike and the wax-lipped scientist hop on a snowmobile, leaving Minkey and Mike’s daughter to snowboard down in the face of an oncoming avalanche. This sequence exemplifies everything that is wrong with Spymate and everything that is wrong with modern civilization in general.

By taking the snowmobile and the wax-lipped scientist, Mike places the life of his daughter–his only daughter, who is a brilliant scientist–in the shifty paws of a monkey. He trusts a monkey with his daughter’s well-being, and that’s just inexcusable. Monkeys should not be trusted. They should not be given guns. They should not be given jetpacks. And they should not be taught how to snowboard. Doing so empowers the monkeys, to the point where they will one day literally hold the lives of our children in their treacherous grasp. And mankind, like Mike, will be left at the bottom of the mountain watching as a monkey and a child parachute off the side of the mountain, having sacrificed parental duties for the company of a sexy lady who’s really an evil praying mantis that wants to eat Xander. It’s not a pleasant proposition, but Spymate tries to pass it off as a happy ending. And that, my dear idiots, is dreadful, in every sense of the word.

Spymate, as I mentioned earlier, is an abomination. Director Robert Vince gives us yet another reason to distrust those with two first names, as he crafts what is basically a monkey propaganda piece. Robert Vince is the monkeys’ Leni Riefenstahl. Just take a look at his IMDb profile. He started out producing shitty action movies, but in 2000 his career took an interesting turn. He began directing films, films like Most Valuable Primate and Most Xtreme Primate. Robert Vince has clearly been bought off by the monkeys. Movies used to involve human finding themselves through hockey or skateboarding, but in Robert Vince’s films he tries to pass off monkeys as replacements for children. This brings monkeys directly in the living rooms of the American family. It sanitizes the monkeys, makes them lovable. There will come a day when a monkey wearing a tropical shirt beating albino over the head with a coconut will not alarm anyone. We will tolerate it. We will tolerate it because it’s common. Robert Vince and his ilk must be stopped.

If you have children, do not let the watch Spymate. It will only taint their worldview in favour of the monkeys. And if you ever meet Robert Vince at a party, burn him alive. You’ll be doing all of humanity a great service. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, Spymate, not surprisingly, earns the dreaded evil tiny head of Sergei Eisenstein.