Arg!

Was plaid too plain? The exhausting spy-vs-spy misfire Argylle uses its namesake diamond-shaped design as a lightheaded leitmotif throughout, proving that a whimsical fabric pattern can actually be more complex and sophisticated than this $200 million action-comedy-romance fizzle.

Blame it on Alfie, the Scottish Fold: purportedly filmmaker Matthew Vaughn’s own family pet, the movie’s stone-faced kitty feels like a way for the director to troll wannabe screenwriters who treasure their dog-eared copies of how-to manual Save the Cat! If your morally uninflected protagonist shows empathy by doing something noble like protecting a feline, explains the book, then your viewers will root for that person. It’s character-building 101, and a movie like Argylle uses it as a running-joke litmus test for its eccentric menagerie of undercover agents.

ARGYLLE ★ (1/5 stars)
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Written by: Jason Fuchs
Starring: Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson
Running time: 139 mins

Too bad it dismisses the book’s other story-structure pointers with the same cheery contempt. Argylle is a messy muddle, dispensing WTF plot twists and too-clever reversals-of-fortune that it blasts through any semblance of plausibility and exists solely in a fantasy-world array of kitchen-sink larks and Looney Tunes set pieces. It’s a spaghetti-thrown-at-the-wall script, where few ideas stick and most everything ends up on the floor. And I say this as a guileless fan of spy-inflected action-comedy-romances, so trust me, my disappointment runs deep.

The film’s premise is sufficiently solid: wildly successful spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), adored by fans worldwide but otherwise a cat-lady shut-in, has just finished the manuscript for Book Five in her bestselling series centered around international man of mystery Aubrey Argylle (Henry Cavill). Crushing it like a femme Le Carré, Conway cranks out fiction that feels so realistic that some readers suspect that she’s a secret agent herself. “The secret is research, research, research,” she demures.

On a train ride to visit her parents, Elly meets a hippie-dippie traveler named Aiden (Sam Rockwell), who suddenly admits to being an undercover operative and immediately starts protecting her from wave after wave of homicidal baddies with all sorts of guns, knives, and lethal injections. He explains that her books are so eerily prophetic that she’s practically a fortune teller. And that makes her a prime target for kidnapping. By the way, the body count in this flick is preposterously high, starting with this railway bloodbath which causes nary a stir among the other passengers or train employees—the first of many just-roll-with-it inanities that eventually wear thin.

Now on the run, Elly—with intrepid Alfie in a travel backpack—must trust Aiden enough to help him track down a missing hacker’s log book and obtain the master files that will expose a corrupt rogue organization called the Division. And in the course of increasingly preposterous events, Elly and Alfie find their fraught association turning into a nascent love affair. All they have to do is navigate false identities, a brainwashed amnesiac, border-hopping intrigue, a tech lair nestled in a crude-heavy tanker floating in international waters, and loved ones who turn out to be loathed ones. “The greater the spy, the bigger the lie—that’s cheeky!” says Aiden cheekily before lying yet again and pulling off yet another great spy move.

If only Argylle took the breeziness of its premise more seriously. Vaughn’s movies usually traffic in inanity—his Kingsman franchise is delightfully ludicrous—but there’s a baseline commitment to at least a modicum of logic and emotion, and occasionally even some inventive excitement. Argylle lacks most of this, which naturally explains a depressingly idiotic climax involving Elly doing a figure skating spin while shooting a machine gun as she uses daggers on her feet to skate through an oil spill. What the, huh? Yes, reader, I just described an actual thing that happens in this mealy mess.

Other strange flavors: an oddly touching pas de deux between Elly and Aiden as they massacre surrounding goons through fluffy clouds of color-coordinated tear gas. The jarring and not inexpensive use of the brand-new Beatles song “Now and Then,” which plays a small but vital role in a plot point that goes back in time five years—when that song literally did not exist. And the very welcome appearance of Dua Lipa tarnished by the dawning realization that it’s actually just a very unwelcome cameo. More Dua Lipa, please!

Also showing up to cash a check, read a few lines and leave: Ariana DeBose and John Cena, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, who mostly just smiles, drinks Pinot Noir and watches basketball on a huge LCD screen. Bryan Cranston and Catherine O’Hara have more screen time than all of them combined, but they spend it mostly mugging and gnashing their teeth. Do not stick around for the end credit scene, unless you want to be further confused by a half-baked and half-hearted crossover gambit with another film series. “What the hell was that?” said a fellow audience member to his date as I walked out. Couldn’t agree more.