Metacritic reviews

The action’s routine (as is the norm for this sub-genre) and the spy plot skimps on mystery and twists. But Bautista and Coleman maintain their winning rapport from the first film, and Schaal’s inappropriate comments never fail to amuse. It’s just about enough.

My Spy: The Eternal City is an underwhelming action-comedy sequel that is best as a covert coming-of-age tale, but more frequently suffers as a grab-bag of tonality that abandons what helped My Spy succeed in the first place.

Too often this muddled movie, which never really settles on a tone, plays its espionage plot points with a dour seriousness that’s at odds with a teen comedy.

There’s just something retrograde about the entire thing, a copy of a copy, a “new” story with some very light edits to the “old” one, that bogs down even the lightest touches of merriment.

There are some nice enough performances, particularly from Ken Jeong as JJ’s CIA boss and Anna Faris playing the high school deputy principal leading the choir trip. But tonally the movie is all over the place.

My Spy: The Eternal City is tailor-made for an awkward family movie night: too violent and suggestive for elementary schoolers, too dumb for teenagers, and too confusingly joke-free for adults expecting a comedy.

The film is light enough without being funny enough, most of it staged, by director Peter Segal (“Tommy Boy,” “The Naked Gun 33 1/3”), in a kind of generic action overdrive.

Anyone who’s dealt with a teenager can relate to the baffling surliness that emerges out of nowhere — but like needless sequels, this, too, shall pass.

My Spy The Eternal City is so unconcerned with its obligations as an action-comedy that it fails to either thrill or amuse, making it a chore to actively pay attention to.

My Spay: The Eternal City is derailed by how readily it succumbs to the ludicrousness of a plot that generates stakes that are far too heavy for the threadbare structure to support.