BY LARRY CARROLL | Eddie Murphy has to be one of the most frustrating movie stars in the history of the business. In twenty years of filmmaking, the guy has been a part of somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen classic movies. But, in a bizarre kind of career balance, he's also turned out just as many miserable failures - lifeless, uninspired pieces of junk that even his most loyal fans would have a hard time sitting through. So, one has to wonder, how long will filmgoers continue to trust him as an entertainer? How many times will people throw down their ticket money and cross their fingers for another Beverly Hills Cop, walking sheepishly into the theater for fear of sitting through another Holy Man?

2002, sadly, has been one of the worst for Murphy, whose whooping laugh was once considered a national treasure. Starting with the criminally vacuous cop comedy Showtime and following it up with the big-budget flop The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Murphy's anticipated one-two punch didn't knock anybody out except for maybe himself. Now, he tries to end things on a good note with I Spy, a name-only update of the Bill Cosby-Robert Culp television show from The Sixties. Having now seen the movie, I can tell you that while it's not as bad as Vampire in Brooklyn, it's nowhere near his greatest films either. I spied with my little eye...a mediocre collection of cookie-cutter action scenes and occasionally inspired dialogue bits that should settle into somewhere in the middle of the Murphy canon.

Murphy is Kelly "57 and O" Robinson, a cocky middle-weight boxing champion whose next bout is to take place in Budapest, Hungary. The Ali-esque Robinson loves to talk trash to his opponents, refer to himself in the third person, and watch videotapes of his press conferences - and he has the moves to back up his bravado. Robinson's swagger is so pronounced, in fact, that when he gets a phone call from George W. asking him to go on a "secret mission" to protect the U.S. from a "weapon of mass destruction", he coolly accepts as if he were being asked to do another product endorsement.

The mission involves ruthless arms dealer Arnold Gundars (Malcolm McDowell, A Clockwork Orange), the possessor of a stolen U.S. spy plane with camouflaging capabilities. Gundars plans to sell the craft to the highest bidder, and the U.S. Government thinks that their best chance at finding the plane's location is to exploit Gundars' love for boxing. Knowing that the sinister evildoer will invite Robinson to his next party, the C.I.A. pairs him up with an agent (Owen Wilson, The Royal Tenenbaums) who they hope he can sneak past the heavy security. Wilson's Alexander Scott is a second-tier, somewhat bumbling spy who gets stuck with cheap gadgets ("My stuff looks like you got it from Radio Shack in 1972", he whines) and longs for the day when the other agents will look at him and see a seven too, not just a double zero.

Robinson and Scott don't get along when they're first paired together (who would've guessed it?), but (here's another shocker) eventually come to like each other. It's this evolving friendship that makes the movie. In what might be the film's best scene, the two bickering spies find themselves trapped in a sewer and, inhaling methane, bond through sappy confessions to each other. Another highlight is a Cyrano de Bergerac lift that has Murphy feeding Wilson lines while he tries to seduce his beautiful co-agent Rachel (Famke Janssen, X-Men).

The film comes alive when it throws the plot out the window and just lets Murphy and Wilson sit around together and exploit their sizable chemistry. Credit director Betty Thomas (Dr. Doolittle) for being cognizant of this, but also blame her for allowing the action in her action-comedy to not hold up its end of the bargain.

The action scenes range from laughable to barely competent. Worst among them is a snowy rescue so obviously filmed on a soundstage that you'll be looking for the stagehands, and an air balloon escape that looks almost as real as Gonzo's similar adventure in The Muppet Movie. I Spy is brimming with generic shots of non-speaking baddies in black outfits flying through the air after an explosion, or being shot and dying in ways that are as bloodless and non-threatening as possible. One scene, in fact, takes place in a steam bath where the badguys are shot while wearing nothing but towels - yet still there is no evidence of blood or bullet wounds! Where are these bullets hitting them? It's all absurdly antiseptic and devoid of any imagination whatsoever. At no time do you feel like either of the spies are in any real danger, which waters down the movie so much that you wish they had just made Murphy and Wilson into plumbers or carpenters - any other profession that would let you keep the humor and expand on it without having to throw in the token action sequences which Thomas so obviously finds cumbersome.

For the most part, this can be forgiven every time that things slow down and the two leads start talking. Murphy's rapid-fire attitude contrasts well with Wilson's measured sarcasm and their riffs on the Harlem Globetrotters, Marvin Gaye and the tough love of a grandmother are good for a few laughs. This is Murphy's edgiest role in several years, and although Kelly Robinson may not be as much of a recalcitrant as Axel Foley or Reggie Hammond (or Murphy himself in his concert videos, for that matter), it's still good to see him getting back to his roots and away from the watered down kid-film rut he's fallen into in the last half-decade. Wilson, a charismatic actor whose off-center nose is one of the many facets that make him seem credible whether saving your life or pumping your gas, has wisely maintained the indie sensibilities he got from Bottle Rocket and The Minus Man while expanding his name recognition with these kinds of blockbusters. Here's hoping that he continues to toe the line in this fashion and goes on to find the sustained synergistic success that leading men like Nicholas Cage and Bruce Willis have only flirted with.

Murphy and Wilson are able to elevate a pretty pathetic script (especially when you consider that it took four people to write it) into a decent enough movie. It seems as though there was a philosophy on the set - when in doubt, shoot more footage of the two leads talking to each other. This reduces the strong supporting cast to borderline cameos - they seem lucky if they can get three or four substantial scenes in which to work. McDowell, Janssen and Gary Cole (Office Space) have all proven on several occasions to be fine actors capable of holding the screen, but Thomas is clearly hesitant to let the camera linger on any of them for too long. It's a shame, as Cole's superspy Carlos (who seems to be a cross between Steven Segal and Antonio Banderas) is one of the funniest gags in the film. Movies like I Spy always lay the groundwork for a sequel, but I suspect most people leaving the theater would tell you they'd rather see a Carlos spin-off than an I Spy 2.

Director Thomas has made a hodgepodge of a film that attempts several running gags only to have them die of loneliness. A title card joke at the beginning of the movie seems isolated from the rest of the film; references to Alex's ineffective equipment occur about two reels apart from each other; a cute stakeout fixation is abandoned too soon. This sloppiness also carries over to the details of the film - Robinson gets a tattoo but doesn't have so much as a band-aid applied; he boxes twice within a matter of weeks; he is arrested but we don't know how he gets out of prison so quickly - these, like the poor action scenes, undermine any sense of real adventure the movie is trying to convey. These are characters existing in their own little world, not ours.

But at least their world is good for a few laughs. Does this movie mark the umpteenth return of Eddie Murphy to greatness? Hardly. But it doesn't make the slide any worse, and after the year that Eddie Murphy has had, he should consider himself lucky.

GRADE: C+