Director : McG
Starring : Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy, Chris Pine, Chelsea Handler
Running Time : 98 minutes
Release Date : 14 February 2012
‘It’s Spy against Spy’
I was lucky enough to be invited to a screening in Sydney of This Means War, so I want to start by saying a big thank you to my friends at Nelson Bay Cinemas for giving me the opportunity to take all this to the next level. Next time you are in gorgeous Port Stephens, please drop in and say Hi. Now, about that movie…..
FDR (Pine) and Tuck (Hardy, with his English accent intact….YAY!!) are CIA agents and best friends. They would, literally, take a bullet for one another. When they discover they are dating the same woman, Lauren (Witherspoon), all bets are off. They decide to let Lauren decide who she wants to be with and…well boys will be boys.
The movie gets off to a cracking pace with a very cool opening scene. We have impossibly handsome CIA agents sauntering across the room targets in sight, said targets batting eyelashes furiously, bad guys showing up and ruining the oh-so-suave pick up lines. Then comes the CIA stuff. We have helicopters full of bad guys and cash, guns firing, glass breaking, slick spy sliding across the floor while firing gun moves, tall buildings being leapt from, tall buildings being thrown from, thugs, more guns. YEAH!!!
Alas, this has all been a monumental screw up and our agents are grounded. Yep desk bound for the foreseeable future. And they are bored, bored, bored.
Enter Lauren, a gorgeous consumer products tester/reviewer who winds up dating both FDR and Tuck. As both men are very different personalities, how she ends up dating both of them is charming and genuinely funny.
Speaking of funny, Chelsea Handler is absolutely hilarious in this movie. Laugh out loud hilarious. She plays Trish, the perfect rude, crude and no nonsense counterpart to Witherspoon’s sweet and slightly wounded Lauren. The scenes with Lauren and Trish are some of the movie’s funniest with Handler throwing down the one liners with perfect comedic timing.
When FDR and Tuck discover they are both dating Lauren, they do the gentlemanly and honorable thing…….they set about sabotaging each other’s love life. This is where the real fun begins.
Remember how I said these men were bored? Well bored men with the entire CIA arsenal of technologies, gimmicks and let’s face it, really cool stuff at their disposal promises just one thing…..great fun. Covert teams are selected, covertly of course, and as they say, hilarity ensures.
Both men have their qualities, both men have their flaws. I couldn’t choose who I was cheering for. When I started wanting one to get the girl, I changed my mind with the next scene and wanted the other to win her. Even their teams start to become invested in their little side operation, providing some very funny moments.
This is a great, fun, funny and romantic movie. The pace never lets up and the laughs keep coming. It has enough chick stuff to draw out some genuine awwwws from the audience (and remember these are movie types who do this every day) and enough CIA agent/boy stuff to keep the fellas more than entertained. I will be going to see it again once it’s at the cinemas.
This Means War opens February 14 and would be the most perfect movie for Valentine’s Day. Even if you don’t have a Valentine this year, get a group of friends together and go see it anyway…plus you won’t have to share your popcorn with anyone.
Oh and yes, Lauren does pick her true love…
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