Recxpectations: Argylle

My explanation for Recommended Expectations aka Recxpectations is here and I’m going to do my best to be objective about “Argylle”.

SYNOPSIS: “Reclusive author Elly Conway writes best-selling espionage novels about a secret agent named Argylle who's on a mission to unravel a global spy syndicate. However, when the plots of her books start to mirror the covert actions of a real-life spy organization, the line between fiction and reality begin to blur.”

EXPECT: an intentionally stupid movie
This is a big, dumb, goofy movie. In fact, I wouldn’t be stunned if the original script was attempting to be a parody of action films. The film toys with being meta and campy at times but for the most part, it’s an over-the-top, cartoonish, "dumb fun” action-comedy.

EXPECT: a Kingsman-esque film
If you didn’t like director Matthew Vaughn’s “Kingsman” movies, you probably won’t like “Argylle”. Liking the “Kingsman” movies isn’t a guarantee that you’ll like “Argylle” but the odds are better that it’s in your wheelhouse. This is admittedly reductive but “Argylle” feels like a more feminine take on the Bro-y Kingsman franchise.

DON’T EXPECT: quality special effects
A lot of people seem to have strong feelings about special effects nowadays so it’s very important to lower one’s expectations and accept that you’re walking into a film with lousy CGI. In some cases, it is probably intentional, to help play up the campiness of certain moments but, yeah, just go into the movie expecting cartoonish special effects.

EXPECT: a film that is 2 hours and 19 minutes
And that’s just the movie. That doesn’t include ads and trailers. For the most part, the film motors along at a pretty good pace but there’s one slog of expository dialogue in the middle and, when it comes to the final act, this is one of those flicks that will. not. end.
As I left the theater, my feeling was that the film would have been better as a limited series or maybe broken up into a couple of films. This movie is supposed to launch a franchise and it feels like they threw all of their ideas into this one and didn’t leave much room for future films.

EXPECT: probably enough moments
Film critics seem to ignore a large segment of the moviegoing public. The overlooked segment is the people who, when you ask them how they could like a bad movie and point out the problems with the movie, shrug and say, “Yeah, but what about…” and then list off five or six scenes they thought were cool or funny. For many filmgoers, there is little-to-no demand for a full, cohesive film experience. Give them a handful of fun/cool scenes and they’ll walk away happy.
Now I am not one of these filmgoers (save for “Fast 5” through Furious 7) so I’m not sure if “Argylle” definitely has enough fun to go around but the women sitting next to me seemed to eat it up and even after the section in Act 2 that is an absolute slog of expository dialogue, they were quick to hop back on the bandwagon when the next fun moment rolled around.

EXPECT: a bewildering score
I’m sure there’s a logic behind that score and it isn’t as haphazard as it felt to me but this is a film that starts with pop music in big scenes and then midway through kicks into a generic, overbearing orchestral score. Part of me thought that maybe it was part of the joke but the score was just so generic and slapped on that it felt like it was a temp score and they ran out of money to replace it so they just left it in.

DON’T EXPECT: a movie that should have cost $200 million
Even people who like this movie probably would agree that $200 million was way too much to invest in this. This would have been a long shot to make its money back pre-COVID when more people were going to movie theaters. Apple+ was basically betting that Vaughn would be able to earn more than all three Kingsman movies combined (they grossed about $260 million domestically) or they were hoping to rely on overseas audiences to carry this to profitability.
I also think that a studio is setting itself up for failure if it spends that kind of money on an original film that’s supposed to launch a franchise. You have to expect that your first film is going to find a large chunk of its audience post-theatrical run. Austin Powers is a great example; the original film - which everyone and their mother was quoting back in the day - only made $53 million in the US. But since the first film cost just $16 million to make, it was a hit and the sequels went on to make over $200 million each domestically.

Speaking subjectively, I wouldn’t recommend this movie unless people really loved the trailer or were big fans of Vaughn’s “Kingman” movies. For the general moviegoing public, I’d recommend checking out Vaughn’s “Layer Cake” instead. “Layer Cake” supposedly helped Daniel Craig get the role of James Bond. It’s also kind of funny that the film is very cool and stylish but features a blowhard, trigger-happy character The Duke and it feels like Vaughn’s career has gone that way instead of trying to conjure up more sleek, grounded fare.