Critical reception
Washington Post critic Paul Attanasio called Spies Like Us "a comedy with exactly one laugh, and those among you given to Easter egg hunts may feel free to try and find it". Chicago Reader critic Dave Kehr condemned the character development, saying: "Landis never bothers to account for the friendship that springs up spontaneously between these two antipathetic types, but then he never bothers to account for anything in this loose progression of recycled Abbott and Costello riffs". The New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote: "The stars are always affable, and they're worth watching even when they do very little, but it's painful to sit by as the screenplay runs out of steam."
Variety magazine opined in a staff review: "Spies is not very amusing. Though Chase and Aykroyd provide moments, the overall script thinly takes on eccentric espionage and nuclear madness, with nothing new to add." TV Guide published a staff review, stating: "Landis' direction is indulgent, to say the least, with big landscapes, big crashes, big hardware, and big gags filling the screen. What he forgets is character development, that all-important factor that must exist for comedy to work well." David Parkinson, writing for the Radio Times, felt that "Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase simply fail to gel, and there's little fun to be had once the boisterous training school gags are exhausted."
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes shows a score of 35% based on 26 reviews and an average rating of 4.5/10. The site's consensus states: "Despite the comedic prowess of its director and two leads, Spies Like Us appears to disavow all knowledge of how to make the viewer laugh." Metacritic displays a score of 22 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Writing for Common Sense Media, Andrea Beach called the film a "dated '80s comedy [with] strong language, few laughs". Collider staff writer Jeff Giles, reviewing the film's Blu-ray release, stated: "on the whole, it's more amusing than funny; it's only 102 minutes, but it feels too long by half. For all the talent involved, there's an awful lot of flab. It's the kind of movie you can walk away from for 10 minutes without missing anything important."
