My Spy, hitting theaters this weekend, is a throwback to the action-comedy genre, and thanks to stellar performances all around, it works.

Dave Bautista, showing once again that he was sorely underused in the Avengers movies, plays CIA agent JJ, who is surprisingly bad at his job. After a mission to retrieve a plutonium core goes awry in Ukraine (it’s identified as taking place at Chernobyl, so please ignore the dude who says, “Welcome to Russia” in the opening scene), he’s reassigned to a safer mission: surveilling the wife and daughter of a deceased arms dealer who may or may not know the location of the plans to complete the nuclear weapon.

Tagging along for the mission is CIA tech Bobbi, played by Kristen Schaal. She’s infatuated with JJ but mostly serves to be there to demonstrate his emotional growth through the film.

The two inept agents run into trouble early on, as the intelligent, precocious daughter – played to perfection by Chloe Coleman – figures out who her new neighbors really are and proceeds to blackmail JJ into being something of a surrogate dad and start teaching her spycraft. Her mom (Parisa Fitz-Henley) is a somewhat absentee single parent, admittedly struggling to juggle her career as an ER nurse with the demands of raising her kid by herself.

Of course, this is an action-comedy, so what follows for the rest of the movie is a pretty predictable chain of events that has JJ risk everything for this family he soon realizes he wants to be a part of.

The movie is just the right length, clocking in at a sparse 99 minutes, and director Peter Segal keeps it moving along nicely.

The only downside is that the movie leans heavily on stereotypes, rather than spending time trying to define its characters. Of course JJ has a tragic past from the military. Of course the CIA tech is a nerd with no social skills. Of course the other neighbors – the only other residents of the apartment we ever meet – are a flamboyantly gay couple interested in ice skating and fashion. Of course the young hero is intelligent beyond her years and, as such, is constantly bullied at school.

Honestly, I would have happily sat through a movie that was 10 or 15 minutes longer to have them have at least have one character in the movie who wasn’t plucked straight from a CalArts Screenwriting 101 class.

But despite (or maybe because of?) this flaw, the entire cast (which also includes Ken Jeong playing the Ken Jeong character) does well with what they’re given. Though there are a couple of other hulking brutes with real comedic chops out there today, Bautista is perfectly cast and does indeed share some real chemistry with Coleman. Together, they manage to elevate an otherwise by-the-books movie into an enjoyable 99 minutes.

One other quick note: there’s nothing after the credits, or at least there wasn’t in the advanced screening I saw.