Early trailers and TV spots for “Spy”, starring Melissa McCarthy, appeared to be on the same entertainment level as director Paul Feig’s “The Heat”, also starring McCarthy alongside Sandra Bullock. However, it was curious to see it being pitted up against some major blockbuster heavy hitters right at the beginning of June. Would it get lost in the shuffle in this summer season of a major superhero team-up, a post apocalyptic action fest / director’s return to form, and a direct sequel to one of Steven Spielberg’s signature movies?

In a surprise reaction, critics have been stumbling over themselves to proclaim “Spy” a fantastic comedy, placing Melissa McCarthy front and center in what they’re calling the best movie of her career. McCarthy is hilarious in this film for sure, definitely jumping assuredly into the driver’s seat of a big James Bond-esque action vehicle, and while the movie is genuinely hilarious, I’m not sure where to place it next to the Feig/McCarthy buddy cop movie, “The Heat”; in other words not necessarily a slam-dunk betterment.

Jason Statham is definitely one of the funny highlights as a supposed unstoppable agent who constantly talks about his over-the-top, larger-than-life feats of surviving repeated attempts on his life in the face of danger and violence. Although, this gag eventually runs its course about halfway through the movie. Rose Byrne, who starred with McCarthy in “Bridesmaids”, is one of the primary bad guys (girls); very prim and proper in her lethal higher class mentality, although mostly playing straight woman to McCarthy’s newly anointed agent after Byrne’s character, Rayna Boyanov, exposes all of the CIA’s operatives in the field and McCarthy, office-bound intel partner to Jude Law’s super spy, must go undercover with the notion that no one will know who she is.

Peter Serafinowicz as Aldo, a clumsy informant who continually desires McCarthy’s character with lust on his mind, delivers some very funny one-liners, yet never quite rises above his one-note bluntly forward advances. And how did Bobby Cannavale end up in this movie? Another villain in the grand scheme, his part merely provides that he be connected with the “MacGuffin” of the plot; a nuclear device for sale to the highest bidder.

I’ve noticed that Paul Feig’s gross out humor in “Bridesmaids” has been replaced by sometimes very violent moments, and “Spy”, which is Rated R, continues this curve coming off of “The Heat”. Perhaps too much in one scene where a large kitchen knife is shoved (in prolonged fashion) through a hand in a tense hand-to-hand fight.

An awful lot of ground is covered in the story, finding it a much more convoluted script than it should have been. However, Melissa McCarthy manages to keep the laughs coming, tossing out very funny raw everyman retorts in the midst of high tech espionage dialogue and confrontations. I felt her character in “The Heat” was a just that much funnier written outing then “Spy”, but this newly anointed summer hit is still simply a mostly laugh-inducing time at the movies for those hoping for something not as blown out as “San Andreas” and guaranteed to have you laughing out loud now and again.

The bottom line: “Spy” is definitely good and a lot of fun…but it's not 

altogether true the best comedy of the summer.