Having made a mess of the army in "M*A*S*H", Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould play with the world of espionage in "S*P*Y*S". The plot is a little confusing, but the tricks that they play make up for that. The best scenes are the car chase and the wedding. There's even a scene that seems a little prescient, as Gould's character mentions a NATO presence in Afghanistan.
Overall, the bouncing around Paris gives the guys a lot to do, all of it very enjoyable. I think that the point of the movie is that Cold War-era espionage was such a joke that it might as well get this treatment in a movie. The movie got released in an era when a lot of movies focused on suspicion of the government ("The Parallax View", "Three Days of the Condor", etc). Clearly it can easily be the stuff of humor. Really funny.
Overall, the bouncing around Paris gives the guys a lot to do, all of it very enjoyable. I think that the point of the movie is that Cold War-era espionage was such a joke that it might as well get this treatment in a movie. The movie got released in an era when a lot of movies focused on suspicion of the government ("The Parallax View", "Three Days of the Condor", etc). Clearly it can easily be the stuff of humor. Really funny.