This clearly intentional decision not to do any fat jokes means finding more creative, smarter, and more progressive ways to get laughs. (And as Susan gradually gets comfortable in her new role, she starts dishing out the insults as fast as she receives them. But nobody ever so much as implies that her girth is a factor in their ridicule.
People make fun of that - of her apparent lack of sophistication, her unfashionableness, her plainness. The cover identities she's given cast her as a cat lady, a divorced mom, and a Mary Kay salesperson, all lending themselves to frumpy, unflattering disguises that stand out even more when she goes to fancy places like Paris and Rome. She's initially timid and unconfident, a dowdy nobody. analyst who's given a field assignment when all the other agents' identities are compromised. She is they're just not about her weight. Which isn't to say McCarthy's character isn't the butt of jokes. He went back to make changes when McCarthy came aboard, but as he told 's Peter Sobczynski, "There was not that much of an adjustment, because it was really about an Everywoman who gets put in extraordinary circumstances." Writer-director Paul Feig, who worked with McCarthy on Bridesmaids and The Heat, thought scheduling issues would prevent her from being in Spy, so he wrote the part without anyone specific in mind.
A thin actress could have played the role without having to revise any of the script. Not only are there no jokes about it, nobody even refers to it, nor mentions it, nor seems to notice it. But here's the thing: Spy contains not a single joke about Melissa McCarthy's weight.
Where to get a costume like susan cooper from the movie spy full#
Many people surely assume that Spy, an espionage comedy starring McCarthy, is full of fat jokes. We've been conditioned to expect, consciously or not, that when a plus-sized person has the leading role in a comedy, there are going to be fat jokes. (Though the premise of Mike and Molly is that two fat people fell in love after meeting at Overeaters Anonymous.) But despite the relative restraint of McCarthy's films, loudmouth semi-critics like Rex Reed and Jeffrey Wells have famously used them as a jumping-off point for mean-spirited remarks about her appearance. To her great credit, McCarthy hasn't done much weight-related humor in her films - certainly not as much as Chris Farley in Tommy Boy or Kevin James in Grown Ups.
The new film stars Melissa McCarthy, who is famous for many things: She was nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role in Bridesmaids she's a boisterously funny and agile comedienne who started with the sketch-and-improv troupe The Groundlings she stars on the long-running CBS sitcom Mike and Molly she's been the lead in several feature films, from the hilarious The Heat to the ho-hum, little-loved Tammy and Identity Thief.īut there's at least one more thing McCarthy is well known for: She's overweight. Spy is one of the best comedies of the year, not just because it's hilarious, but because of what it chooses not to make jokes about.