There’s a certain filmmaking subgenre—popularized/perfected by the Fast & Furious franchise and, more recently, The Beekeeper—that I like to refer to as “elevated stupidity.”
The approach requires two very important pieces to work. The first is a surplus of story beats that are deliberately, bombastically ridiculous from every perceivable exercise of logic, and the second is ensuring that every other aspect of the film severely commits to taking said nonsense seriously, with the actors doing most of the heavy lifting in that department. When done right, these films can defy critical parameters in a way that’s—sometimes begrudgingly, but always inarguably—admirable.
Argylle is one of these films, but rather than being a great example of elevated stupidity, it’s merely a passable one, making the very act of critiquing Argylle one of the most paradoxical endeavors out there. Indeed, Argylle mixed up the recipe a bit and was worse for it (a statement that can applied to the film as a whole rather than just its approach), but the end result is still recognizable, even if you’re left wishing that the gamble paid off.
What went wrong with Argylle?
Let’s get one thing straight; Argylle is far from an entirely lost cause. It’s no daring assumption to think that everyone involved was having the time of their lives bringing this story to life, and the execution of the many antics that take place over its runtime—a number of them genuinely chuckle-worthy—is a testament to that.
But Argylle makes one fatal mistake that sends a vehemently self-destructive ripple effect throughout its bones: It shows a reckless lack of understanding of how to be about itself, and it does that chiefly by refusing to not be in on its own jokes.
There seems to be some sort of myopic agreement in far too many corners of the entertainment world that self-awareness absolves you of creative responsibility. This could not be further from the truth; thinking to oneself “I know this decision is a stupid one, but if I tell the audience that I know it’s stupid, then I can’t be criticized for making it,” is arguably worse than being unaware of the stupidity of said decision in the first place.
To Vaughn’s credit, he doesn’t entirely commit this sin with Argylle, but the film’s execution does leave an impression of it. For instance, having a bunch of Ritter’s cronies struggle to not slip and fall on oil as they encroach upon Elly and Aiden is quite hilarious, and having Elly slap a pair of knives onto her boots and go ice skating on said oil as she lays the smackdown on said cronies is also hilarious, but these two examples of the film’s humor can’t be treated the same way, and the reason for that is because the former knows it’s funny while the latter does not.
Argylle, however, still treats all of its humor with the same self-aware, nudge-nudge-wink-wink meta energy throughout, and while that’s preferable to forcing a tone shift, it nevertheless results in an on-and-off identity crisis that markedly undermines the individual fun factor of the film’s many pieces, which perhaps explains why a two-hour and 19-minute film felt like a 19-hour and two-minute film.
Argylle should have swung harder, not wider
Argylle‘s comedy is far and away its most foundational pillar, but it never bothers to try and understand how it should relate to comedy in its own context, and instead just shoves whatever funny bits it can into itself without any regard for how well it gels with its meta overtones, which themselves are arguably misguided in their own right.
From there, it’s a disjointed storm of discord with most all of its other pieces—specifically, a weak plot that drags the film down as it unsuccessfully disguises itself with cheeky plot twists that may have actually worked quite well if Argylle wasn’t trying so hard to laugh alongside the audience. Combine this with the odd smattering of harmony and you end up with a movie that deserves criticism by the truckload, but doesn’t completely invite all of it, which itself ends up being cause for even more criticism to be leveled at it.
Indeed, perhaps Argylle has taken the elevated stupidity approach and rejiggered it into elevated trolling. And if that sounds like a compliment, it isn’t, even if I really want it to be.
(featured image: Universal Pictures)
