John Landis has spent his whole career getting dismissed by critics, but the people like his movies—and I’m definitely a person. I think he’s funny. Spies Like Us isn’t perfect, but it brings the laughs on my couch. The big joke in some of Landis’s best work is its excess. The Blues Brothers wouldn’t be nearly as outrageous without its 297 car crashes and musical numbers. This Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase team-up goes similarly big with a booming Elmer Bernstein score, bullet-riddled action scenes and the kind of globe-trotting production normally seen in James Bond movies. It’s in the service of a little goofball Cold War comedy with no motive, moral or much of a plot. It’s all wisecracks and slapstick when two low-level workers in US national defense get recruited for what they don’t realize is a suicide job. They’re the expendable agents sent out out to make noise and get killed on their way from Pakistan to deepest, snowiest Russia and distract the enemies from the work of the real agents to infiltrate the Soviet nuclear program. Or something. Chase is the woman-chasing smartass (a part originally intended for John Belushi), Aykroyd is the nerd who sounds convincing spouting technical jargon. Both get several showcase moments, with Chase’s ridiculous attempts at cheating on a written exam for government agents being the most classic. A Bob Hope cameo provides the wink to the audience that, yes, everyone’s aware that this is just an updated Hope & Crosby Road movie.