Ewald Osers

Roald Dahl; Lewis Gilbert; Sean Connery; Donald Pleasence; Ian Fleming; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.; United Artists Corporation.; MGM Home Entertainment Inc.; Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc.

Spaceships are captured in order to start a war.

Boring, inane and racist. You expect a James Bond film to be corny and cringe-inducing, but being boring really makes this installment stand out as uniquely awful. The only thing about it that isn't terrible (apart from the theme song, or course) is Donald Pleasence's Blofeld - but he's only in the movie for about five minutes.

Concept: D
Story: F
Characters: D
Dialog: F
Pacing: D
Cinematography: C
Special effects/design: D
Acting: C
Music: B

Enjoyment: D

GPA: 1.2/4 ( )

Rating: 3.5* of five

1967's film version of the book apparently kept nothing to speak of from the book's plot, little enough of the characters, and broke new ground in space science, if only physics would agree to operate by Bondiverse rules. So that raises the question:

What the actual fuck. Undetectable space launches from a densely packed island nation famous then as now for being xenophobic? Volcanos hollowed out and repurposed because they're extinct and then *KERPOW* they blow up on cue? The sorriest ninjas on record being trained in what appears to be a suburban garden?

Yeesh. No wonder Sean Connery was ready to leave the role after this turkey.

You might have noticed that Connery is, by Western standards, a large man. Tall. Muscular. Imposing. And he's now going to pretend to be Japanese. Forty-five years ago, there were very few Japanese men over 6ft tall. To the best of my knowledge, there are to this good moment a vanishingly small number of Japanese men with Scottish accents and furry chests. So when Bond is presented as a native husband for a local girl WITH HER OWN HOME AND BOAT, I rolled my eyes so hard I'm pretty sure I saw my brain. Like every damn single man on that island wouldn't be all up in Bond's business from second one, seeing as how he nabbed the most eligible woman in Japan!

So it sounds like 3.5 stars is ridiculously generous, doesn't it? There are reasons: 1) Bond's death scene at the beginning of the movie. So cool I get frostbite from watching it. 2) Blofeld's big blond henchrat. Scenic. 3) The Toyota 2000GT that Bond's first gal-pal drives:


Über cool car. And, trivia for the five of you still reading this, Toyota delivered the car to the filmmakers a couple weeks before shooting. Connery did not fit in the vehicle. At all. Toyota's staff said, "oh no, so sorry, we'll fix it" and they DID. I am constantly amazed that this level of customer service ever existed on the surface of the earth.

The house I live in presently was built in 1938. It's got golden oak floors, painted baseboards, dentilated crown moldings...very NOT 1960s decor. The films have reminded me of the ocean of blond wood, teak, copper, and faux stone that permeated the built environment of the day. Glass tables, horrible things they were too. An amazing number of ceramic lamps with cylindrical paper shades. As familiar to me as my beard, but not today's design vernacular by any stretch. I wonder, is it off-putting or old-fashioned looking to kids of the 1980s? (Kids HA most of y'all got kids of your own now.)

So at least one star added for taking me right back into a world I liked a lot, because it was the first one I ever knew. It had its charms. I prefer today, but that doesn't lessen the draw of a familiar past. That's a big part of the fun I get from rewatching these films.

ETA The song! I forgot to mention Nancy Sinatra's rendition of "You Only Live Twice", a syrupy ballad with a screechy violin hook that embeds itself in the brain extremely deeply. The hook is played over a lot of lovely scenery shots, so repetition does its ugly work. Still, it's nowhere near as horrible as the Tom Jones rendition of "Thunderball." That is just heinous. ( )