Hollywood is gradually figuring out what to do with Melissa McCarthy. Following her breakout performance in Bridesmaids (2011), she played obnoxious characters in Identity Thief and The Heat, but this espionage comedy from Bridesmaids director Paul Feig gives her a softer, more agreeable, and no less funny character. She plays a CIA desk jockey improbably assigned to track down a missing nuke, and the roughhouse gags all play on her vulnerability, physical and otherwise. At two hours this is too slackly edited for a spy adventure, though the rangey running time allows for plenty of Apatow-like character work from McCarthy and British comic actress Miranda Hart, as the heroine’s goony pal at the agency. With Jude Law, Rose Byrne, Allison Janney, and Jason Statham eagerly lampooning his own badass screen persona.
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