I had forgotten how good a proper comedy can be. Spy, starring Melissa McCarthy, did everything right. I laughed hard, and left the theater on that happy high that comes from laughter with, rather than laughter at.

This isn’t a sit-com kind of movie where we laugh at the absurdity that grows out of an absurd situation. It’s a comedy with character, and the absurd situation is actually kind of terrifying. In order to maintain tension we aren’t allowed to laugh at it very much. That’s fine. There’s plenty of funny elsewhere.

After having seen Scarlett Johansson, Charlize Theron, and now Melissa McCarthy in action roles, I’m afraid Scarjo’s Black Widow finishes in a distant third place. Theron’s Furiosa was amazing, and set a new bar, but I’m putting McCarthy’s Susan Cooper over that bar and in first, because she was the only one of the three to ace the delivery of the stand-up-and-cheer moment.

I could write a 5,000-word treatise going into more detail about how this works for me, but I have comics to make and an RPG to write. I’ll just say that Spy clears my Threshold of Awesome, and leaps to the top of my list. I had so much fun…

UPDATE

One of the reasons this movie worked so well for me is that it treats its genre, the super-spy thriller, in much the same way my own Schlock Mercenary treats science fiction.

This quote from writer director Paul Feig is telling:

I’m a big fan of spy movies, and I wanted to create a broad action comedy in that genre. The comedy comes from the characters. It’s not a spoof or satire. The danger and action are genuine. We wanted it to have the tone of a spy film, but still be as funny as we could make it. I also wanted to create a relatable story in which we could all wonder, ‘If I was recruited as a spy and sent on a mission, how might I react?’ —Paul Feig, cited on IMDB

That’s not the only reason it works, but that’s a big one, and for me that was the biggest surprise. I went in expecting a spoof, and what I got instead is the very thing I most love creating.

I really enjoyed San Andreas. I went in expecting to see a ridiculously over-the-top depiction of an earthquake, and I was not disappointed. There was also a surprisingly good human story in there—surprising because while I could see the formula, and while everybody played straight to type, I didn’t care. I was engaged, and had a good time.

They did screw up the last line of the film, missing a great opportunity that probably wasn’t obvious to them until after all the set dressing had been added, but still, they missed it. Oh well.

San Andreas enters at #8 on my “how much fun did I have at the theater” scale for the year, and the unexpectedly enjoyable character story (visible recipe pages notwithstanding) squeaks it above my Threshold of Awesome.

The cautionary tale, in which we are warned that something bad might happen, is one of science fiction’s most venerated traditions. Another one, of similarly honorable and established pedigree, is the sense of optimistic wonder.

Tomorrowland is both of these, and more because it pits them against one another from the very first act. It’s also many other things, including, and I’m not sure how I feel about this, an opportunity for Disney to turn “It’s a Small World” into a ride more like Pirates of the Caribbean with the aesthetics of Space Mountain and retro-futurism.

It’s troubling, and delightful, and though it clumsily wields plot devices, and is downright silly in some places, I found myself sitting back at the end and realizing that the tropes and absurdity were there on purpose, and the clumsiness was more akin to that drunken master martial art.

Tomorrowland is definitely a film that my tribe of futurists and science fiction aficionados should see, and I expect us to argue passionately about it under the right (wrong?) circumstances. This film was made with us in mind, and while it’s not exclusively for us, there are things in there that the pop-culture, Johnny-come-lately science fiction fan will miss entirely, and I really like a film that will go out on that kind of a limb.

It clears my Threshold of Awesome and comes in at #4 on the fun-in-the-theater scale. More than that, however, it spoke very powerfully to Sandra and to me, and it’s one we’ll be picking up on disc when it’s out.

For the record, I want one of those pins. Not because I want to go to Tomorrowland (though I do) but because I want to be seen as somebody who wants to go there (which I most certainly am.) It’s silly, perhaps, but it’s one of a very few brands I’m actually willing to wear.