This espionage comedy stars Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland and has lots of asterisks in the title, but there the similarity between this and the classic black comedy M*A*S*H ends. Whereas M*A*S*H was incisive, witty and well-written, S*P*Y*S is asinine, frantic and embarrassingly poor. Our two heroes are both supposed to be bumbling CIA spes the agency would like to get rid of. When they bungle the defection of a Russian dancer, they have the Russians on their tail too. Incompetent they may be, but they still manage to evade the combined forces of the Americans and the Russians just as the scriptwriters seem to have avoided most of the possible laughs.


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