I must admit to not being a great fan of Canby (he considered OHMSS the worst Bond film). Here he praises LALD for playing it safe and being non-ideological, but that's what the Bond films have always done with hot-button issues (that's why the Russians were never the real villains in the preceding films). I'm not sure why Canby is so bowled over by this--I guess he was really sick of blaxpolitation movies. I also bridled at him dismissing Fleming's plot as nonsense but praising Mankiewicz, who barely provided a plot at all. That said, I'd still prefer Canby's review to one from any current New York Times writer, who would undoubtedly brand the film toxic, racist, imperialist, misogynist, classist, and any other -ist I forgot to mention.
From what I’ve read from Canby I agree with your assessment @Revelator and I will post something he said about Roger Moore tomorrow which may have been tongue-in-cheek but I’m not so sure it is.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
This the season to be nasty, to rip this town wide open, to admit biases and prejudices, to publicize wrong‐doers and disasters, to celebrate frauds and freaks and mistaken projects. Next week there'll be a Ten Best Films of the Year list, which will be put together rather soberly, even if a little arbitrarily. This week is for fun. The following awards are intended to offend. If they stir anything on the order of rational debate, they've failed. These awards are gut things. They aren't meant to be reasonable. In short, they're rotten, Thus, to:
Roger Moore, the Kabuki Acting Award, in recognition of the manner in which he has reduced all human emotions to a series of variations on one gesture, the raising of the right eyebrow. To watch Moore as James Bond in “The Man With the Golden Gun” is to monitor a hard‐working eyebrow at somewhat greater length than would appeal to anyone except a fetishist.
————————
I’m still unsure whether this is tongue-in-cheek or not but it is decidedly nasty to compare Roger Moore’s eyebrow raising gestures to the Kabuki syndrome which is a rare congenital disorder, meaning that a child is born with the condition. Children with Kabuki syndrome usually have distinctive facial features, mild to moderate mental impairment and growth problems. Kabuki syndrome can also affect many other body systems, including the heart, intestines, kidneys, and skeleton. Kabuki syndrome occurs in about one out of every 32,000 births. It affects males and females equally.
For point of clarity I didn’t know what Kabuki was before googling it, I’m kind of guessing it’s not a relatively well known syndrome, but comparing the two is not on, in my opinion. I’m the last person to jump on the woke bandwagon (which is getting absurd, what with the ultra-mild comedy series Terry And June now getting trigger warnings) but common decency would stop me from making fun of kids with a debilitating syndrome.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The throbbing information that "the energy crisis is still with us" isn't what you need or want to learn from a James Bond picture. But that poverty of invention and excitement characterizes Guy Hamilton's "The Man With the Golden Gun," which opened yesterday at neighborhood theaters.The movie, which also explains that "coal and oil will soon be depleted," sets Bond in pursuit of a missing device that converts solar energy into electricity Bored already? That was predictable, Even Kingsley Amis, a great admirer of the late Ian Fleming, spoke of "the over-all inferiority" of the writer's last novel, and this movie is doggishly faithful to its model.There's a male villain with three nipples, but you can't milk much plot out of that—or them. Amid the general lack of gumption, Roger Moore's large rigid figure appears to be wheeled about on tiny casters I always have a soft spot for statues that turn out to be alive, and there are a couple in this film.But an actor who appears to have been cast in clay is another matter, and Mr. Moore functions like a vast garden ornament. Pedantic, sluggish on the uptake, incapable of even swaggering, he's also clumsy at innuendo. (While Sean Connery wasn't the wit of the century, he did manage to be impudent, and there were those pleasing moments of self-parody.) But whether Mr. Moore is twisting a woman's arm to discover a fact that he already knows, or nuzzling an abdomen without enthusiasm, he merely makes you miss his predecessor. The script trundles out such lines as "Your steam bath is ready" or "A mistress cannot serve two masters" between the dullest car chase of the decade and a very routine explosion. The only energetic moments are provided by Herve Villechaize, as a midget gifted with mocking authority, and Christopher Lee as the golden gunman—both have a sinister vitality that cuts through the narrative dough. (Yet if I were a midget, I'd rebel against the perky bass music that bubbles up at every entrance; cute bassoons did the same for the dwarf in "The Abdication." Can't small persons be filmed without coy theme tunes?) The movie also includes some beautiful glimpses of Thailand. But if you enjoyed the early Bond films as much as I did, you'd better skip this one.
END OF REVIEW
To be fair to the reviewer, this wasn’t far away from my initial reaction when I first saw this 50 years ago. It’s only in the last half dozen years or so that I am actually starting to appreciate the film in a good light, because compared to what we’ve been served up since Brosnan took over the reins it’s a bloody masterpiece, (CR06 excepted, of course).
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Yes, really! Apparently the mildest sitcom ever, set in middle-class suburbia, is full of discriminatory language that shocks today’s youth to the core. Heaven help us if we have to fight another war.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
For those who haven't heard of it, it's as CHB says above - a middle aged couple in middle class suburbia with plots of the "my boss is coming to dinner, let's make sure nothing goes wrong" type. Strangely enough, there was an almost identical show called "Happy Ever After"- same actors, same situation - which preceded it. The two ran for ?15 years in the 70s and 80s.
By Janet Maslin - NYT July 28 1977 - THE SPY WHO LOVED ME -
DURING THE COURSE OF "The Spy Who Loved Me," James Bond vanquishes an amphibious building that looks like a giant spider, a 7 foot 2 inch villain with metal fangs, hundreds of hapless extras and one very beautiful broad, but he hardly ever comes to grips with his most insidious adversary, the James Bond formula.The same conventions that have provided 10 Bond movies with their patent pizazz also serve as a straitjacket, and these days a Bond film is interesting only insofar as it quietly subverts the series' old tricks. Happily, "The Spy Who Loved Me" has its share of self-mockery—not enough for a full-scale send-up, but enough to give shopworn old 007 a shot in the arm.The motivating sentiment behind the Bond movies has always been envy: the viewer, poor slob, is expected to covet Bond's women, admire his elaborate playthings and marvel at his ability to chase through the desert in evening clothes without getting dusty. Fifteen years ago, at the time of "Dr. No," this sort of thing was a great deal more effective than it is today, because the notion was new and the gadgets could be genuinely dazzling. But by now Bond fans have seen so many fast cars and floozies come and go that they may be almost as jaded as James himself. Almost, but not quite: Roger Moore is so enjoyably unflappable that you sometimes have to look closely to make sure he's still breathing. Presented with a fabulous new white Lotus, he drives off impatiently without even examining the car's special accessories (as it turns out, the Lotus can swim). Seduced by a conniving cutie, he looks desperately bored.Mr. Moore has the anonymous aplomb of a male model—appropriate, because the film is littered with trademark-bearing merchandise — and he seems incapable of bringing much individualized zest to the role. But his exaggerated composure amounts to a kind of backhanded liveliness. Though Mr. Moore doesn't compromise the character, he makes it amusingly clear that hedonism isn't all it's cracked up to be.The plot this time, which bears no resemblance to that of Ian Fleming's novel, features Curt Jurgens as a shipping magnate determined to destroy the world and Barbara Bach as a Rusian agent who grudgingly joins forces with Bond to pole-ax this scheme. Miss Bach is spectacular but a little dim, even by Bond standards; certainly she makes no sense as a master spy who is almost (but not quite) as ingenious as 007 himself.In all fairness, Miss Bach's is an impossible role: Beauty and brains needn't be incompatible, but maintaining the requisite level of pulchritude of a Bond heroine is such a full-time job that it precludes any other work more strenuous than, say, watching Bond sip his very dry martini (shaken, not stirred).The film moves along at a serviceable clip, but it seems half an hour too long, thanks to the obligatory shoot-'em-up conclusion, filmed on the largest sound-stage in the world, but nevertheless the dullest sequence here. Bond's final blowout, however lavishly produced, has long since gotten to be old hat, and besides, it's the attention to smaller details that has helped the series maintain its high gloss.The theme song, sung by Carly Simon, ranks with Paul McCartney's theme from "Live and Let Die" as one of the most delightful surprises the series has had to offer—even if it is accompanied by footage of a naked woman, in silhouette, doing silly calisthenics on the barrel of an enormous gun."The Spy Who Loved Me" has a PG ("Parental Guidance Suggested") rating even though Bond indulges in his favorite means of exercise a little more listlessly than usual. A number of extras are gunned down almost bloodlessly, and arch-villain Curt Jurgens feeds his secretary to a shark.
END OF REVIEW
Well, TSWLM did invigorate the series. Janet Maslin seems not to be a fan and doesn’t even mention the spectacular PTS which every other reviewer mentions even if they are not so enamoured with the movie.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,610Chief of Staff
She certainly isn’t a fan…and I find her review strange….using the terms broad and floozie, yet complaining about a naked woman in silhouette 🤔
By Vincent Canby - 29 June 1979 - NYT - REVIEW OF MOONRAKER
At a time when everything is being either inflated or devalued it's comforting to know that at least one commodity maintains its hard currency. That's James Bond, who, by all rights, should be an antique, as emblematic of the 60's as the Beatles and flowerpower, but who goes blithely on as if time has had a stop."Moonraker," which opens today at the Rivoli and other theaters, is the 11th in the remarkable series that began in 1963 with "Dr. No" and it's one of the most bouyant Bond films of all. It looks as if it cost an unconscionable amount of money to make, though it has nothing on its mind except dizzying entertainment, which is not something to dismiss quickly in such a dreary, disappointing movie season.What's it about? That's a silly question, though I suppose one might answer that it's about sleight of hands—those of all the people who worked on it. They include the indefatigable producer, Albert R. Broccoli (also known as Cubby), Lewis Gilbert, who directed it, Christopher Wood, who wrote the screenplay, Ken Adam, the production designer, and all of those far from little people who are responsible for the extraordinary tricks that persuade us to suspend our disbelief. Mr. Wood's screenplay begins when a United States space-shuttle craft mysteriously disappears as it's being ferried to England on the back of a Boeing 747. The fiend behind this remarkable theft is a French-accented American aeronautics tycoon named Drax (Michael Lonsdale), an eccentric fellow who lives in California in a transplanted French chateau and who surrounds himself with astronauts, all of whom are between the ages of 18 and 25, beautiful and female. The space-shuttle craft, called Moonraker, was actually built by Drax's company, so the mystery that James Bond (Roger Moore) must solve is why Drax would feel the need to hijack his own product. The trail leads from London to California to Venice to Rio de Janeiro and, after that, to Drax's jungle hideaway that takes in bits and pieces of settings filmed in Guatemala and Argentina as well as Brazil. Among other things "Moonraker" deals in creative geography. The climactic duel occurs in the only location left—outer space."Moonraker," like all of the better Bond pictures, returns us to a kind of film making that I most closely associate with the 15-part serials of my youth. Our astonishment depends on the ingenuity by which the writers and directors disentangle Bond from the impossible situations into which he seems to fall every seven minutes."Moonraker" begins with one of the funniest and most dangerous (as well as most beautifully photographed and edited) sequences Bond has ever faced. He's booted out of an airplane without a parachute and must do mortal combat, during a swooping, soaring free-fall, with an adversary who, luckily, does have a parachute. There are also a high-speed chase through Venetian canals (with one gondola a disguised Hovercraft), another chase on the Amazon, a fight on the roof of the funicular that goes to the top of Rio's Sugar Loaf mountain, and a final confrontation in space that is as handsome as anything in "Star Wars."What's it about? It's about movie making of the kind Georges Méliès pioneered in films like "Voyage to the Moon" (1902) and "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea"(1907). It's the unimaginable most satisfactorily imagined. Almost everyone connected with the movie is in top form, even Mr. Moore who has a tendency to facetiousness when left to his own devices. Here he's as ageless, resourceful and graceful as the character he inhabits. Mr. Lonsdale is sometimes uncomfortably wooden and square, but then he's not supposed to be a barrel of laughs. Lois Chiles is lovely as Bond's Central Intelligence Agency vis-à-vis, who's just one of the sexually tireless Bond's conquests. Richard Kiel reappears as Bond's thug-enemy, the gigantic Jaws, who, you may be happy to learn, undergoes the kind of character transformation that means he'll probably turn up in yet another Bond film. Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell, as, respectively, "M" and Miss Moneypenny, also are on hand.Welcome back to old friends."Moonraker," which has been rated PG ("parental guidance suggested"), includes some suggestive situations and comically overstated violence.
Old, Old Friends.
END OF REVIEW
Canby seems to be mellowing in his old age with this review.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Yes, it's all quite fair enough though poor Q doesn't rate a mention. I suppose he's entitled to find Lonsdale "wooden and square" but many or even most have found him far better than that.
Whilst perfectly adequate, I think Lonsdale does underplay the role, not unlike Kurt Jurgens to be fair. I always find that the Moore reign is bookended by good performances - Kotto, Lee and Walken - with the rest being rather bland.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
There's one moment when Lonsdale comes to life--when he shouts at Jaws--but he's otherwise dead, like the rest of MR's cast. Lois Chiles proved she could act in other films, but not this one. And Roger, who came to life in TSWLM, gives one of his duller performances. Lewis Gilbert's Bond films are notable for enormous spectacle but anemic acting.
Canby's review struck me as rather uncritical. He's very impressed by the budget and special effects and laughably praises the "ingenuity by which the writers and directors disentangle Bond from the impossible situations" (since when does Bond using a gadget count as ingenious?) and insists that the Bond commodity has neither been inflated or devalued, though better critics had shown that Moonraker was a piece of bloated self-parody.
By Vincent Canby - 26 JUNE 1981 - NYT - REVIEW OF FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
FORGET about the relationship of this planet to the sun. Whenever possible, summer officially begins with the release of a new James Bond film - that is, today, with the opening at Loews State 1 and other theaters of ''For Your Eyes Only,'' the 12th in the phenomenally successful series of movies that was initiated almost 20 years ago with ''Dr. No.''
Nothing else in our popular culture has endured with such elan as Agent 007, whether played by Sean Connery, by George Lazenby (briefly, in ''On Her Majesty's Secret Service'') or by the incumbent, Roger Moore. Not the least of the feats of the Bond films is their having outlived all the imitations, particularly the Matt Helm and Flint pictures.
''For Your Eyes Only'' is not the best of the series by a long shot - that would be a choice between ''Goldfinger'' and ''Moonraker'' - but it's far from the worst. It has a structural problem in that it opens with a precredit helicopter chase - in, over, around and through London - which is so lunatic and inventive that the rest of the movie is hard-put to achieve such a fever-pitch again.
Though Mr. Moore shows no sign of tiring - his Bond retains an ageless cool that remains outside of time - the screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Michael Wilson is occasionally lazy, allowing us fleeting moments of introspection when logic raises its boring head. One of the secrets of the best of the Bonds is the manner in which we, in the audience, are made willing accomplices to illogic.
'For Your Eyes Only'' is the first feature film to be directed by John Glen, who has been the editor and second-unit director on several earlier Bond pictures, including ''Moonraker,'' for which he directed the spectacular free-fall fight sequence that opened the movie. Considering Mr. Glen's experience as an editor, it's surprising that some of the action sequences in ''For Your Eyes Only,'' especially an underwater fight between Bond and a villain, both in diving suits, should be more confusing than suspenseful. In a James Bond movie, a little ambiguity of this sort is much too much.
Most of the time, though, ''For Your Eyes Only'' is a slick entertainment in which Bond's mission is to locate a sunken British spy ship, one that contains some potentially lethal equipment sought by the Russians and that went down perilously close to the coast of Albania. The film, which was shot on location in Greece, Corfu and the Italian Alps, contains a great deal of natural scenery in which Bond swims, dives, skis, drives, falls and flies, and from which he emerges never scratched so badly that he can't carry on.
''For Your Eyes Only'' is not the spaced-out fun that ''Moonraker'' was, but its tone is consistently comic even when the material is not. It has no villains to match Goldfinger or Jaws, but it has one of the most appealing leading ladies of any Bond picture. She is Carole Bouquet, the tall, dark-haired beauty who played one-half of the title role in Luis Bunuel's ''That Obscure Object of Desire.''
The supporting cast includes Topol, who still can't resist playing cute when straight would be better; Lynn-Holly Johnson as a champion ice skater, which she is; Julian Glover as the principal bad guy, and Michael Gotherd, who gives a new, evil connotation to the wearing of octagonal-shaped glasses. The film's very funny postscript introduces one of Britain's most famous married couples, played wickedly by John Wells and Janet Brown. And Maurice Binder's opening titles, always one of the fancier features of the Bond movies, are still terrific.
END IF REVIEW
Canby confirms his love for Moonraker, and while he kind of likes For Your Eyes Only, it’s odd how he doesn’t rate Topol’s superb portrayal of Bond’s ally which is on a par with the great Pedro Armendariz as Kerim Bey.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Disappointed he liked Janet Brown and John Wells. Agree with the titles, innovative for showing Sheena Easton singing. Otherwise, a decent review that also chimes with much of my feelings.
By Vincent Canby - June 10 1983 - NYT - Review of OCTOPUSSY
LET'S face it: the sensationally successful and long-lived James Bond films will not quit, and for good reason. They are ''Star Wars'' fantasies for the middle-aged of all ages. ''Octopussy,'' the 13th in the series that began with ''Dr. No'' in 1961, is actually better than most.
The film, which opens today at the National and other theaters, makes no pretense of being based on anything except the Ian Fleming character and the high good humor and wit of the film makers. Agent 007 faces a succession of unspeakable dangers and obliging women with the absurdly overstated, indefatigable waggishness that has outlived all imitations. Roger Moore, who plays Bond yet again, is not getting any younger, but neither is the character. The two have grown gracefully indivisible.
Much of the story is incomprehensible, but I'm sure that the characters include a crazy Soviet general (Steven Berkoff), who is as feared by the Russians as by the Allies; a decadent Afghan prince (Louis Jourdan), who gambles with loaded dice and would not hesitate to blow up the world for personal profit, and the glamorous tycoon of the film's title (Maud Adams), who lives in a lake palace in Udaipur, India, from which she runs an international business empire of hotels, airlines and an East German circus.
The point of any Bond adventure is its incredible gadgets - this film includes a virtually pocket-size jet plane - and the variations worked on the chases, sequences that, like great vaudeville gags, build from one surprise to the next to discover the unexpected topper. In ''Octopussy'' the best of these are a hilarious, precredit sequence in which Bond flees Cuba, another in India where Bond finds himself in league with a tiger in the course of an unusual ''shoot'' and one across East Germany involving an automobile, a circus train and an atomic bomb.
George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson are responsible for the story and screenplay, which was directed by John Glen, who does much better than he did with ''For Your Eyes Only.'' However, the material is markedly better, and the budget seems noticeably larger. Peter Lamont's production design is both extravagant and funny.
''Octopussy,'' which has been rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''), includes a lot of low-voltage sexual hanky-panky and some scenes of mayhem that are more picturesque than realistically violent.
END OF REVIEW
A reasonable review of OP, Berkoff’s OTT performance is the best in the movie, the PTS is again the highlight of a Roger Moore Bond movie.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
While on the subject of Octopussy, here's the New Yorker review by Pauline Kael, published June 27, 1983. The first part (omitted here) reviewed The Man With Two Brains.
Silliness is also the chief charm of Octopussy, the fourteenth (and least elegantly titled) of the James Bond movies. It's part parody and part travesty, and it’s amiably fatigued. Those of us who keep going to the Bonds (even after the last two, the apathetic Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only) have probably become resigned to Roger Moore. He doesn’t move particularly well, and, at fifty-five, he doesn’t move very fast, either. We know (and his sheepish, self-deprecating manner tells us that he knows we know) that he has been playing the role because the producer couldn’t find anybody more exciting. He still goes through (some of) the motions of a modern swashbuckling hero, but he gets most of his effects now by the spark in his worried, squinched-up eyes. He may not be heroic, but he’s game. And he rises to the occasion of his one first-class joke. It’s part of a sequence that might be a spoof of Raiders of the Lost Ark: running just a few steps ahead of a hunting party that’s out to get him, he encounters a series of standard old-movie dangers, including an attack by a deadly animal. Moore lifts his index finger in the Barbara Woodhouse style of disapproval and subdues the beast with a single word.
The picture rattles along. It's not the latest-model Cadillac; it’s a beat-out old Cadillac, kept running with junk-yard parts. (I never thought a Bond movie would actually resort to a suffering man in clown’s makeup.) The director, John Glen, seems to lose track of the story, and neither he nor the writers (George MacDonald Fraser, with Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson) appear to have thought out the women’s roles. Magda, a mysterious, tall, greasy-lipped blonde (Kristina Wayborn, who played Garbo on TV), has an amused manner; she seduces Bond, then disappears without any explanation, and when she turns up again he barely gives her a nod. The naughty, chic perversities that are promised by the title and some of the decor are left to our minds—as if the moviemakers had no idea they’d planted them there.
As the title character, the beautiful Amazon Maud Adams is disappointingly warm and maternal—she's rather mooshy. At one moment, Octopussy is a leader, and the next moment she’s a dupe, who doesn’t know what’s going on around her. The role is a washout, and the performance is so smiley-innocuous that when she leads Bond to her octopus-shaped bed it must be to lie back against the pillows and have a nice cup of tea and milk.
But this is a joke book of a movie, set against a tourist-paradise India (it seems to be all palaces), and Glen keeps the small jokes humming. As an exiled Afghan prince, a dissolute schemer, Louis Jourdan doesn’t have much to do but look annoyed, though he has one sly bit—he puckers up when he pronounces the Amazon’s name, giving it an ironic caress. Some of the other villains are more prominently displayed. There’s a bright, blue-eyed English actor, Steven Berkoff, who plays the fanatic Russian general Orlov. When Orlov speaks English, he takes a gleeful pride in his own precision, and listening to him wrap his tongue around English syllables is one of the slaphappy pleasures of this movie—he’s like the mad Russians who were popular on American radio in the thirties. Kabir Bedi, a handsome Anglo-Indian actor—a monument of a man, who towers over Roger Moore—has a fine villainous curve to his mouth; as the prince’s majordomo, he looks alarming even when he isn’t doing a thing. Among the lesser villains, I rather liked the identical David and Tony Meyer, who have the perfect profession for twins: they work for a circus, throwing knives at each other. There’s also an agreeable appearance by the famous Indian tennis star Yijay Amritraj, who plays an agent assisting Bond; you won't have any trouble spotting him— he’s called Vijay, and he smacks a pursuer with a tennis racquet.
Octopussy is probably the most casual of the Bonds. It features a chase sequence in a crowded marketplace with a great camera angle on a camel looking up and doing a double take as an automobile flies over its head. In some ways, Octopussy is more like the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road comedies than it is like the Bonds. (Among Bond’s disguises here are a gorilla suit and an alligator outfit that doubles as a boat.) The pet octopus that the Amazon keeps is a pretty little thing— blue, with markings so discreet that you might expect to find them on decorator sheets. What this woman is doing with a harem full of cuties (who are sometimes dressed as slave girls) isn’t clear; at times they appear to be a feminist sisterhood, with Octopussy as their den mother. When they’re forced to use their skills in the martial arts, they overpower their male enemies very sweetly, while moving about in gracefully choreographed patterns.
The movie is a little schizzy. It gives us Bond as a gorilla and as a gator; it gives us Bond swinging on ropes in the forest while yodelling like Tarzan. This Bond slides down a bannister while firing a machine gun and travels in a balloon equipped with a bank of television screens so he can monitor the action below. But the moviemakers also have him deliver a virtuous speech expressing anger at the possibility that thousands of innocent people will be killed if the atom bomb that Orlov has planted goes off. It’s as if a teacher had been entertaining us with crazy stories and then reprimanded us for laughing. You can feel a collective slump in the audience.
And here's Kael's short review of A View to a Kill, from the June 3, 1985 issue of The New Yorker:
The James Bond series has had its bummers, but nothing before in the class of A View to a Kill. You go to a Bond picture expecting some style or, at least, some flash, some lift; you don’t expect the dumb police-car crashes you get here. You do see some ingenious daredevil feats, but they’re crowded together and, the way they're set up, they don’t give you the irresponsible, giddy tingle you're hoping for. The movie is set mostly in Chantilly, Paris, and San Francisco, and it’s full of bodies and vehicles diving, exploding, going up in flames. Christopher Walken is the chief villain; the ultra-blond psychopathic product of a Nazi doctor’s experiments, he mows people down casually, his expression jaded. And the director, John Glen, stages the slaughter scenes so apathetically that the picture itself seems dissociated. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen another movie in which race horses were mistreated and the director failed to work up any indignation. If Glen has any emotions about what he puts on the screen, he keeps them to himself.)
All that keeps A View to a Kill going is that it needs to reach a certain heft to fit into the series. As the villainess, Grace Jones, of the flat-top haircut and the stylized look of African sculpture, is indifferently good-humored the way Jane Russell used to be, and much too flaccid, and as the blond heroine Tanya Roberts (who has a disconcerting resemblance to Isabelle Adjani) is totally lacking in intensity—she goes from one life-threatening situation to another looking vaguely put out. About the most that can be said for Roger Moore, in his seventh go-round as Bond, is that he keeps his nose to the grindstone, permitting himself no expression except a faint bemusement. It used to be that we could count on Bond to deliver a few zingers, but this time the script (by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson) barely manages a little facetiousness. The film does come up with one visual zinger: in the small role of Jenny Flex, a stunning young model named Alison Doody comes up with a curvy walk that’s like sex on wheels.
Now, I've enjoyed Canby's last two reviews, but I can't agree with his take on OP. Meanwhile, Kael displays a much more astute reading of both OP and AVTAK, particularly in her notes about the female characters. They rank second to last and dead last on my list. Casual describes AVTAK very well. Mind, Alison Doody as Jenny Flex definitely deserves a mention. 😀
You're very welcome! While on the topic of AVTAK, here's another review. The author was not a film critic but he was a longtime newspaper man: Herb Caen, the legendary columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to producing nearly 60 years of columns, Caen was also an early American fan of Ian Fleming and devoted a couple columns to the books. In 1963 he interviewed Fleming, who returned the favor by writing an article for the Chronicle in praise of Caen.
So when A View to Kill had its world premiere at San Francisco's Palace of the Fine Arts, with Roger Moore and Cubby in attendance, Caen was there too. What did he think of the only Bond film set in his beloved city? Read on...
By Herb Caen(San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1985)
With the enthusiastic cooperation of the Mayor and the police and fire departments, San Francisco is made to look like a loony-bin in the newest and possibly last James Bond film, A View to a Kill, an awkward movie with an awkward title. As I recall, author Ian Fleming’s original title for the flimsy short story on which this $30-million bombo is shakily based was With a View to a Kill, which scans a little more smoothly. It wasn't Fleming at his best but the movie it inspired may be James Bondage at its worst, except for the all-time stinker, Casino Royale, which, oddly, used only the title of Fleming's first historic best-seller.
It is an article of faith among civic leaders that having a movie made in your town is, by and of itself, A Good Thing. Some mumbojumble about identity, business, tourism, etc., but how many remember that Errol Flynn's classic Robin Hood was shot in Chico’s Bidwell Park? San Francisco, of course, has a lot more to offer than Chico, Velveeta jokes aside, and is ruthlessly exploited by every movie and TV maker this side of the Mitchell Brothers who can capture our publicity-crazed Mayor's ear. One can imagine her ecstasy upon learning that a Bond flick would be made in our own backyard, besides which she is said to be keen on Roger Moore, which is understandable.
In return for her unflagging enthusiasm for the Bond project, what do we get? A series of crashes in which our already shaky Police Dept. is made to look like raving incompetents at best and idiots at worst. Very funny, Chiefie, the way they drive their squad cars up the Lefty O'Doul Bridge on Third at China Basin as it is being raised. It is even funnier when they all slide down into each other. Best of all, the bridge's counterweight crushes the captain's car like an eggshell. Not only THAT, the actor playing the captain is a ringer for Chief Con Murphy! They had all been chasing Bond, James Bond, who had stolen a hook’n’ladder from the firemen fighting a blazing City Hall wherein a city official had just been murdered, and that brings up another point.
For reasons not entirely clear—but what is in a Bond flick?—the laughable villain, played with understandable embarrassment by Christopher Walken, pulls out a pistol and kills a city executive as he is seated behind his desk, American flag in the background. It could even be the mayor’s office, or a supervisor’s. Have memories of the Moscone-Milk murders already grown so dim? The Mayor, a woman of fine sensibilities, might have suggested that the killing take place elsewhere—or not at all, since it has nothing to do with the plot. By coincidence, and I realize nobody could have foreseen this, Wednesday, May 22, the day of the world premiere, would have been Harvey Milk's 55th birthday. There were no observances, unless you count this crass scene as one. And as City Hall burned on screen, a few remembered that May 21 was the seventh anniversary of the “White Night” riots during which police cars were set ablaze in the fury that followed Dan White's junk-food verdict.
Well, as the saying goes, it’s only a movie and a very tedious one. Unlike the first blockbusters—Doctor No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger—it is strangely slow, witless and charmless. A scene in a tunnel on the San Andreas Fault (?!) is straight out of Indiana Jones, with flood waters pouring through the shaft as the villainous Walken kills dozens with a submachine gun. In fact, there is more randumb violence in this Bond film than in any other, a sure sign of flagging inspiration. As for Roger Moore, he seems a delightful chap but there is no doubt he has passed his prime, unless we're talking about beef, of which he has a bit too much. He hasn’t got whatever made Sean Connery a believable 007, and to his credit, he knows it. Also in the film: Patrick Macnee, who played the suave Steed to Diana Rigg’s Mrs. Peel in the unforgettable Avengers TV series; he too has grown beefy. Come to think of it, Patrick McGoohan as Secret Agent, Roger Moore as The Saint and The Avengers may have constituted a TV mini-golden age.
The premiere Wednesday night at the Palace of Fine Arts was the usual embarrassing crush of teenagers screaming from behind barricades (they were screaming for Duran Duran, the rock group, not the movie stars) and cops looking a bit sheepish as limos rolled and cameras flashed. The film's producer, Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, now in his 70s with millions to match, looked weary—a man who has seen it all so many times; his old S.F. friend, Jimmy Flood, with whom he once sailed the Pacific, kept calling him “Mr. Cauliflower,” which drew a wan Broccolian smile. The Mayor made a gung-ho speech, blissfully unaware that whoever selects her clothes (Howdy Dowdy?) had once again betrayed her. Not only that, she has regressed to her short Planet of the Apes haircut. Maybe 007 can have a word with her.
And so the James Bond era draws to a close. The incredible is no longer credible and, with Britain reduced to a third-rate nation, the idea of a British secret agent saving the world becomes laughable. But I will never forget the excitement of that first novel, which I read in the late 1950s on a plane from London—what better setting?—or the impact of the Bondian theme music, still alive after being copied to death. It got every movie off to a brilliant start, even this one. The descent toward twilight comes later.
Fun fact: Jimmy Flood's father, James L. Flood, built the Flood Building, a 12-story flatiron that survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and still stands today. I worked there for five years, before the rent became too high. So did Dashiell Hammett, back when he was a private eye, and if you visit the lobby you'll find a replica of the Maltese Falcon, made by Warner Brothers to publicize the movie. In the novel Sam Spade has lunch at John's Grill, which is right next to the Flood Building and still in operation.
Liked the fun fact, rolled my eyes at that review. No doubt everyone here knows the correct title of the short story, unlike Mr Caen, and likewise they know that CR67 did in fact contain more of it's literary source than AVTAK did.
But Bond geekery aside, that's a poor excuse for a review compared with the ones above. He's entitled to his opinions of course.
Comments
I must admit to not being a great fan of Canby (he considered OHMSS the worst Bond film). Here he praises LALD for playing it safe and being non-ideological, but that's what the Bond films have always done with hot-button issues (that's why the Russians were never the real villains in the preceding films). I'm not sure why Canby is so bowled over by this--I guess he was really sick of blaxpolitation movies. I also bridled at him dismissing Fleming's plot as nonsense but praising Mankiewicz, who barely provided a plot at all. That said, I'd still prefer Canby's review to one from any current New York Times writer, who would undoubtedly brand the film toxic, racist, imperialist, misogynist, classist, and any other -ist I forgot to mention.
From what I’ve read from Canby I agree with your assessment @Revelator and I will post something he said about Roger Moore tomorrow which may have been tongue-in-cheek but I’m not so sure it is.
By Vincent Canby - December 29 1974
This the season to be nasty, to rip this town wide open, to admit biases and prejudices, to publicize wrong‐doers and disasters, to celebrate frauds and freaks and mistaken projects. Next week there'll be a Ten Best Films of the Year list, which will be put together rather soberly, even if a little arbitrarily. This week is for fun. The following awards are intended to offend. If they stir anything on the order of rational debate, they've failed. These awards are gut things. They aren't meant to be reasonable. In short, they're rotten, Thus, to:
Roger Moore, the Kabuki Acting Award, in recognition of the manner in which he has reduced all human emotions to a series of variations on one gesture, the raising of the right eyebrow. To watch Moore as James Bond in “The Man With the Golden Gun” is to monitor a hard‐working eyebrow at somewhat greater length than would appeal to anyone except a fetishist.
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I’m still unsure whether this is tongue-in-cheek or not but it is decidedly nasty to compare Roger Moore’s eyebrow raising gestures to the Kabuki syndrome which is a rare congenital disorder, meaning that a child is born with the condition. Children with Kabuki syndrome usually have distinctive facial features, mild to moderate mental impairment and growth problems. Kabuki syndrome can also affect many other body systems, including the heart, intestines, kidneys, and skeleton. Kabuki syndrome occurs in about one out of every 32,000 births. It affects males and females equally.
For point of clarity I didn’t know what Kabuki was before googling it, I’m kind of guessing it’s not a relatively well known syndrome, but comparing the two is not on, in my opinion. I’m the last person to jump on the woke bandwagon (which is getting absurd, what with the ultra-mild comedy series Terry And June now getting trigger warnings) but common decency would stop me from making fun of kids with a debilitating syndrome.
By Nora Sayre - December 19 1974 - TMWTGG
The throbbing information that "the energy crisis is still with us" isn't what you need or want to learn from a James Bond picture. But that poverty of invention and excitement characterizes Guy Hamilton's "The Man With the Golden Gun," which opened yesterday at neighborhood theaters.The movie, which also explains that "coal and oil will soon be depleted," sets Bond in pursuit of a missing device that converts solar energy into electricity Bored already? That was predictable, Even Kingsley Amis, a great admirer of the late Ian Fleming, spoke of "the over-all inferiority" of the writer's last novel, and this movie is doggishly faithful to its model.There's a male villain with three nipples, but you can't milk much plot out of that—or them. Amid the general lack of gumption, Roger Moore's large rigid figure appears to be wheeled about on tiny casters I always have a soft spot for statues that turn out to be alive, and there are a couple in this film.But an actor who appears to have been cast in clay is another matter, and Mr. Moore functions like a vast garden ornament. Pedantic, sluggish on the uptake, incapable of even swaggering, he's also clumsy at innuendo. (While Sean Connery wasn't the wit of the century, he did manage to be impudent, and there were those pleasing moments of self-parody.) But whether Mr. Moore is twisting a woman's arm to discover a fact that he already knows, or nuzzling an abdomen without enthusiasm, he merely makes you miss his predecessor. The script trundles out such lines as "Your steam bath is ready" or "A mistress cannot serve two masters" between the dullest car chase of the decade and a very routine explosion. The only energetic moments are provided by Herve Villechaize, as a midget gifted with mocking authority, and Christopher Lee as the golden gunman—both have a sinister vitality that cuts through the narrative dough. (Yet if I were a midget, I'd rebel against the perky bass music that bubbles up at every entrance; cute bassoons did the same for the dwarf in "The Abdication." Can't small persons be filmed without coy theme tunes?) The movie also includes some beautiful glimpses of Thailand. But if you enjoyed the early Bond films as much as I did, you'd better skip this one.
END OF REVIEW
To be fair to the reviewer, this wasn’t far away from my initial reaction when I first saw this 50 years ago. It’s only in the last half dozen years or so that I am actually starting to appreciate the film in a good light, because compared to what we’ve been served up since Brosnan took over the reins it’s a bloody masterpiece, (CR06 excepted, of course).
"Terry And June"???? Really????
Yes, really! Apparently the mildest sitcom ever, set in middle-class suburbia, is full of discriminatory language that shocks today’s youth to the core. Heaven help us if we have to fight another war.
For those who haven't heard of it, it's as CHB says above - a middle aged couple in middle class suburbia with plots of the "my boss is coming to dinner, let's make sure nothing goes wrong" type. Strangely enough, there was an almost identical show called "Happy Ever After"- same actors, same situation - which preceded it. The two ran for ?15 years in the 70s and 80s.
By Janet Maslin - NYT July 28 1977 - THE SPY WHO LOVED ME -
DURING THE COURSE OF "The Spy Who Loved Me," James Bond vanquishes an amphibious building that looks like a giant spider, a 7 foot 2 inch villain with metal fangs, hundreds of hapless extras and one very beautiful broad, but he hardly ever comes to grips with his most insidious adversary, the James Bond formula.The same conventions that have provided 10 Bond movies with their patent pizazz also serve as a straitjacket, and these days a Bond film is interesting only insofar as it quietly subverts the series' old tricks. Happily, "The Spy Who Loved Me" has its share of self-mockery—not enough for a full-scale send-up, but enough to give shopworn old 007 a shot in the arm.The motivating sentiment behind the Bond movies has always been envy: the viewer, poor slob, is expected to covet Bond's women, admire his elaborate playthings and marvel at his ability to chase through the desert in evening clothes without getting dusty. Fifteen years ago, at the time of "Dr. No," this sort of thing was a great deal more effective than it is today, because the notion was new and the gadgets could be genuinely dazzling. But by now Bond fans have seen so many fast cars and floozies come and go that they may be almost as jaded as James himself. Almost, but not quite: Roger Moore is so enjoyably unflappable that you sometimes have to look closely to make sure he's still breathing. Presented with a fabulous new white Lotus, he drives off impatiently without even examining the car's special accessories (as it turns out, the Lotus can swim). Seduced by a conniving cutie, he looks desperately bored.Mr. Moore has the anonymous aplomb of a male model—appropriate, because the film is littered with trademark-bearing merchandise — and he seems incapable of bringing much individualized zest to the role. But his exaggerated composure amounts to a kind of backhanded liveliness. Though Mr. Moore doesn't compromise the character, he makes it amusingly clear that hedonism isn't all it's cracked up to be.The plot this time, which bears no resemblance to that of Ian Fleming's novel, features Curt Jurgens as a shipping magnate determined to destroy the world and Barbara Bach as a Rusian agent who grudgingly joins forces with Bond to pole-ax this scheme. Miss Bach is spectacular but a little dim, even by Bond standards; certainly she makes no sense as a master spy who is almost (but not quite) as ingenious as 007 himself.In all fairness, Miss Bach's is an impossible role: Beauty and brains needn't be incompatible, but maintaining the requisite level of pulchritude of a Bond heroine is such a full-time job that it precludes any other work more strenuous than, say, watching Bond sip his very dry martini (shaken, not stirred).The film moves along at a serviceable clip, but it seems half an hour too long, thanks to the obligatory shoot-'em-up conclusion, filmed on the largest sound-stage in the world, but nevertheless the dullest sequence here. Bond's final blowout, however lavishly produced, has long since gotten to be old hat, and besides, it's the attention to smaller details that has helped the series maintain its high gloss.The theme song, sung by Carly Simon, ranks with Paul McCartney's theme from "Live and Let Die" as one of the most delightful surprises the series has had to offer—even if it is accompanied by footage of a naked woman, in silhouette, doing silly calisthenics on the barrel of an enormous gun."The Spy Who Loved Me" has a PG ("Parental Guidance Suggested") rating even though Bond indulges in his favorite means of exercise a little more listlessly than usual. A number of extras are gunned down almost bloodlessly, and arch-villain Curt Jurgens feeds his secretary to a shark.
END OF REVIEW
Well, TSWLM did invigorate the series. Janet Maslin seems not to be a fan and doesn’t even mention the spectacular PTS which every other reviewer mentions even if they are not so enamoured with the movie.
She certainly isn’t a fan…and I find her review strange….using the terms broad and floozie, yet complaining about a naked woman in silhouette 🤔
By Vincent Canby - 29 June 1979 - NYT - REVIEW OF MOONRAKER
At a time when everything is being either inflated or devalued it's comforting to know that at least one commodity maintains its hard currency. That's James Bond, who, by all rights, should be an antique, as emblematic of the 60's as the Beatles and flowerpower, but who goes blithely on as if time has had a stop."Moonraker," which opens today at the Rivoli and other theaters, is the 11th in the remarkable series that began in 1963 with "Dr. No" and it's one of the most bouyant Bond films of all. It looks as if it cost an unconscionable amount of money to make, though it has nothing on its mind except dizzying entertainment, which is not something to dismiss quickly in such a dreary, disappointing movie season.What's it about? That's a silly question, though I suppose one might answer that it's about sleight of hands—those of all the people who worked on it. They include the indefatigable producer, Albert R. Broccoli (also known as Cubby), Lewis Gilbert, who directed it, Christopher Wood, who wrote the screenplay, Ken Adam, the production designer, and all of those far from little people who are responsible for the extraordinary tricks that persuade us to suspend our disbelief. Mr. Wood's screenplay begins when a United States space-shuttle craft mysteriously disappears as it's being ferried to England on the back of a Boeing 747. The fiend behind this remarkable theft is a French-accented American aeronautics tycoon named Drax (Michael Lonsdale), an eccentric fellow who lives in California in a transplanted French chateau and who surrounds himself with astronauts, all of whom are between the ages of 18 and 25, beautiful and female. The space-shuttle craft, called Moonraker, was actually built by Drax's company, so the mystery that James Bond (Roger Moore) must solve is why Drax would feel the need to hijack his own product. The trail leads from London to California to Venice to Rio de Janeiro and, after that, to Drax's jungle hideaway that takes in bits and pieces of settings filmed in Guatemala and Argentina as well as Brazil. Among other things "Moonraker" deals in creative geography. The climactic duel occurs in the only location left—outer space."Moonraker," like all of the better Bond pictures, returns us to a kind of film making that I most closely associate with the 15-part serials of my youth. Our astonishment depends on the ingenuity by which the writers and directors disentangle Bond from the impossible situations into which he seems to fall every seven minutes."Moonraker" begins with one of the funniest and most dangerous (as well as most beautifully photographed and edited) sequences Bond has ever faced. He's booted out of an airplane without a parachute and must do mortal combat, during a swooping, soaring free-fall, with an adversary who, luckily, does have a parachute. There are also a high-speed chase through Venetian canals (with one gondola a disguised Hovercraft), another chase on the Amazon, a fight on the roof of the funicular that goes to the top of Rio's Sugar Loaf mountain, and a final confrontation in space that is as handsome as anything in "Star Wars."What's it about? It's about movie making of the kind Georges Méliès pioneered in films like "Voyage to the Moon" (1902) and "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea"(1907). It's the unimaginable most satisfactorily imagined. Almost everyone connected with the movie is in top form, even Mr. Moore who has a tendency to facetiousness when left to his own devices. Here he's as ageless, resourceful and graceful as the character he inhabits. Mr. Lonsdale is sometimes uncomfortably wooden and square, but then he's not supposed to be a barrel of laughs. Lois Chiles is lovely as Bond's Central Intelligence Agency vis-à-vis, who's just one of the sexually tireless Bond's conquests. Richard Kiel reappears as Bond's thug-enemy, the gigantic Jaws, who, you may be happy to learn, undergoes the kind of character transformation that means he'll probably turn up in yet another Bond film. Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell, as, respectively, "M" and Miss Moneypenny, also are on hand.Welcome back to old friends."Moonraker," which has been rated PG ("parental guidance suggested"), includes some suggestive situations and comically overstated violence.
Old, Old Friends.
END OF REVIEW
Canby seems to be mellowing in his old age with this review.
Yes, it's all quite fair enough though poor Q doesn't rate a mention. I suppose he's entitled to find Lonsdale "wooden and square" but many or even most have found him far better than that.
Whilst perfectly adequate, I think Lonsdale does underplay the role, not unlike Kurt Jurgens to be fair. I always find that the Moore reign is bookended by good performances - Kotto, Lee and Walken - with the rest being rather bland.
There's one moment when Lonsdale comes to life--when he shouts at Jaws--but he's otherwise dead, like the rest of MR's cast. Lois Chiles proved she could act in other films, but not this one. And Roger, who came to life in TSWLM, gives one of his duller performances. Lewis Gilbert's Bond films are notable for enormous spectacle but anemic acting.
Canby's review struck me as rather uncritical. He's very impressed by the budget and special effects and laughably praises the "ingenuity by which the writers and directors disentangle Bond from the impossible situations" (since when does Bond using a gadget count as ingenious?) and insists that the Bond commodity has neither been inflated or devalued, though better critics had shown that Moonraker was a piece of bloated self-parody.
Canby's review reminds me of my general feelings about the film, that it works on a pure entertainment level and you can go hang everything else.
By Vincent Canby - 26 JUNE 1981 - NYT - REVIEW OF FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
FORGET about the relationship of this planet to the sun. Whenever possible, summer officially begins with the release of a new James Bond film - that is, today, with the opening at Loews State 1 and other theaters of ''For Your Eyes Only,'' the 12th in the phenomenally successful series of movies that was initiated almost 20 years ago with ''Dr. No.''
Nothing else in our popular culture has endured with such elan as Agent 007, whether played by Sean Connery, by George Lazenby (briefly, in ''On Her Majesty's Secret Service'') or by the incumbent, Roger Moore. Not the least of the feats of the Bond films is their having outlived all the imitations, particularly the Matt Helm and Flint pictures.
''For Your Eyes Only'' is not the best of the series by a long shot - that would be a choice between ''Goldfinger'' and ''Moonraker'' - but it's far from the worst. It has a structural problem in that it opens with a precredit helicopter chase - in, over, around and through London - which is so lunatic and inventive that the rest of the movie is hard-put to achieve such a fever-pitch again.
Though Mr. Moore shows no sign of tiring - his Bond retains an ageless cool that remains outside of time - the screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Michael Wilson is occasionally lazy, allowing us fleeting moments of introspection when logic raises its boring head. One of the secrets of the best of the Bonds is the manner in which we, in the audience, are made willing accomplices to illogic.
'For Your Eyes Only'' is the first feature film to be directed by John Glen, who has been the editor and second-unit director on several earlier Bond pictures, including ''Moonraker,'' for which he directed the spectacular free-fall fight sequence that opened the movie. Considering Mr. Glen's experience as an editor, it's surprising that some of the action sequences in ''For Your Eyes Only,'' especially an underwater fight between Bond and a villain, both in diving suits, should be more confusing than suspenseful. In a James Bond movie, a little ambiguity of this sort is much too much.
Most of the time, though, ''For Your Eyes Only'' is a slick entertainment in which Bond's mission is to locate a sunken British spy ship, one that contains some potentially lethal equipment sought by the Russians and that went down perilously close to the coast of Albania. The film, which was shot on location in Greece, Corfu and the Italian Alps, contains a great deal of natural scenery in which Bond swims, dives, skis, drives, falls and flies, and from which he emerges never scratched so badly that he can't carry on.
''For Your Eyes Only'' is not the spaced-out fun that ''Moonraker'' was, but its tone is consistently comic even when the material is not. It has no villains to match Goldfinger or Jaws, but it has one of the most appealing leading ladies of any Bond picture. She is Carole Bouquet, the tall, dark-haired beauty who played one-half of the title role in Luis Bunuel's ''That Obscure Object of Desire.''
The supporting cast includes Topol, who still can't resist playing cute when straight would be better; Lynn-Holly Johnson as a champion ice skater, which she is; Julian Glover as the principal bad guy, and Michael Gotherd, who gives a new, evil connotation to the wearing of octagonal-shaped glasses. The film's very funny postscript introduces one of Britain's most famous married couples, played wickedly by John Wells and Janet Brown. And Maurice Binder's opening titles, always one of the fancier features of the Bond movies, are still terrific.
END IF REVIEW
Canby confirms his love for Moonraker, and while he kind of likes For Your Eyes Only, it’s odd how he doesn’t rate Topol’s superb portrayal of Bond’s ally which is on a par with the great Pedro Armendariz as Kerim Bey.
Disappointed he liked Janet Brown and John Wells. Agree with the titles, innovative for showing Sheena Easton singing. Otherwise, a decent review that also chimes with much of my feelings.
By Vincent Canby - June 10 1983 - NYT - Review of OCTOPUSSY
LET'S face it: the sensationally successful and long-lived James Bond films will not quit, and for good reason. They are ''Star Wars'' fantasies for the middle-aged of all ages. ''Octopussy,'' the 13th in the series that began with ''Dr. No'' in 1961, is actually better than most.
The film, which opens today at the National and other theaters, makes no pretense of being based on anything except the Ian Fleming character and the high good humor and wit of the film makers. Agent 007 faces a succession of unspeakable dangers and obliging women with the absurdly overstated, indefatigable waggishness that has outlived all imitations. Roger Moore, who plays Bond yet again, is not getting any younger, but neither is the character. The two have grown gracefully indivisible.
Much of the story is incomprehensible, but I'm sure that the characters include a crazy Soviet general (Steven Berkoff), who is as feared by the Russians as by the Allies; a decadent Afghan prince (Louis Jourdan), who gambles with loaded dice and would not hesitate to blow up the world for personal profit, and the glamorous tycoon of the film's title (Maud Adams), who lives in a lake palace in Udaipur, India, from which she runs an international business empire of hotels, airlines and an East German circus.
The point of any Bond adventure is its incredible gadgets - this film includes a virtually pocket-size jet plane - and the variations worked on the chases, sequences that, like great vaudeville gags, build from one surprise to the next to discover the unexpected topper. In ''Octopussy'' the best of these are a hilarious, precredit sequence in which Bond flees Cuba, another in India where Bond finds himself in league with a tiger in the course of an unusual ''shoot'' and one across East Germany involving an automobile, a circus train and an atomic bomb.
George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson are responsible for the story and screenplay, which was directed by John Glen, who does much better than he did with ''For Your Eyes Only.'' However, the material is markedly better, and the budget seems noticeably larger. Peter Lamont's production design is both extravagant and funny.
''Octopussy,'' which has been rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''), includes a lot of low-voltage sexual hanky-panky and some scenes of mayhem that are more picturesque than realistically violent.
END OF REVIEW
A reasonable review of OP, Berkoff’s OTT performance is the best in the movie, the PTS is again the highlight of a Roger Moore Bond movie.
While on the subject of Octopussy, here's the New Yorker review by Pauline Kael, published June 27, 1983. The first part (omitted here) reviewed The Man With Two Brains.
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Silliness is also the chief charm of Octopussy, the fourteenth (and least elegantly titled) of the James Bond movies. It's part parody and part travesty, and it’s amiably fatigued. Those of us who keep going to the Bonds (even after the last two, the apathetic Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only) have probably become resigned to Roger Moore. He doesn’t move particularly well, and, at fifty-five, he doesn’t move very fast, either. We know (and his sheepish, self-deprecating manner tells us that he knows we know) that he has been playing the role because the producer couldn’t find anybody more exciting. He still goes through (some of) the motions of a modern swashbuckling hero, but he gets most of his effects now by the spark in his worried, squinched-up eyes. He may not be heroic, but he’s game. And he rises to the occasion of his one first-class joke. It’s part of a sequence that might be a spoof of Raiders of the Lost Ark: running just a few steps ahead of a hunting party that’s out to get him, he encounters a series of standard old-movie dangers, including an attack by a deadly animal. Moore lifts his index finger in the Barbara Woodhouse style of disapproval and subdues the beast with a single word.
The picture rattles along. It's not the latest-model Cadillac; it’s a beat-out old Cadillac, kept running with junk-yard parts. (I never thought a Bond movie would actually resort to a suffering man in clown’s makeup.) The director, John Glen, seems to lose track of the story, and neither he nor the writers (George MacDonald Fraser, with Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson) appear to have thought out the women’s roles. Magda, a mysterious, tall, greasy-lipped blonde (Kristina Wayborn, who played Garbo on TV), has an amused manner; she seduces Bond, then disappears without any explanation, and when she turns up again he barely gives her a nod. The naughty, chic perversities that are promised by the title and some of the decor are left to our minds—as if the moviemakers had no idea they’d planted them there.
As the title character, the beautiful Amazon Maud Adams is disappointingly warm and maternal—she's rather mooshy. At one moment, Octopussy is a leader, and the next moment she’s a dupe, who doesn’t know what’s going on around her. The role is a washout, and the performance is so smiley-innocuous that when she leads Bond to her octopus-shaped bed it must be to lie back against the pillows and have a nice cup of tea and milk.
But this is a joke book of a movie, set against a tourist-paradise India (it seems to be all palaces), and Glen keeps the small jokes humming. As an exiled Afghan prince, a dissolute schemer, Louis Jourdan doesn’t have much to do but look annoyed, though he has one sly bit—he puckers up when he pronounces the Amazon’s name, giving it an ironic caress. Some of the other villains are more prominently displayed. There’s a bright, blue-eyed English actor, Steven Berkoff, who plays the fanatic Russian general Orlov. When Orlov speaks English, he takes a gleeful pride in his own precision, and listening to him wrap his tongue around English syllables is one of the slaphappy pleasures of this movie—he’s like the mad Russians who were popular on American radio in the thirties. Kabir Bedi, a handsome Anglo-Indian actor—a monument of a man, who towers over Roger Moore—has a fine villainous curve to his mouth; as the prince’s majordomo, he looks alarming even when he isn’t doing a thing. Among the lesser villains, I rather liked the identical David and Tony Meyer, who have the perfect profession for twins: they work for a circus, throwing knives at each other. There’s also an agreeable appearance by the famous Indian tennis star Yijay Amritraj, who plays an agent assisting Bond; you won't have any trouble spotting him— he’s called Vijay, and he smacks a pursuer with a tennis racquet.
Octopussy is probably the most casual of the Bonds. It features a chase sequence in a crowded marketplace with a great camera angle on a camel looking up and doing a double take as an automobile flies over its head. In some ways, Octopussy is more like the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road comedies than it is like the Bonds. (Among Bond’s disguises here are a gorilla suit and an alligator outfit that doubles as a boat.) The pet octopus that the Amazon keeps is a pretty little thing— blue, with markings so discreet that you might expect to find them on decorator sheets. What this woman is doing with a harem full of cuties (who are sometimes dressed as slave girls) isn’t clear; at times they appear to be a feminist sisterhood, with Octopussy as their den mother. When they’re forced to use their skills in the martial arts, they overpower their male enemies very sweetly, while moving about in gracefully choreographed patterns.
The movie is a little schizzy. It gives us Bond as a gorilla and as a gator; it gives us Bond swinging on ropes in the forest while yodelling like Tarzan. This Bond slides down a bannister while firing a machine gun and travels in a balloon equipped with a bank of television screens so he can monitor the action below. But the moviemakers also have him deliver a virtuous speech expressing anger at the possibility that thousands of innocent people will be killed if the atom bomb that Orlov has planted goes off. It’s as if a teacher had been entertaining us with crazy stories and then reprimanded us for laughing. You can feel a collective slump in the audience.
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And here's Kael's short review of A View to a Kill, from the June 3, 1985 issue of The New Yorker:
The James Bond series has had its bummers, but nothing before in the class of A View to a Kill. You go to a Bond picture expecting some style or, at least, some flash, some lift; you don’t expect the dumb police-car crashes you get here. You do see some ingenious daredevil feats, but they’re crowded together and, the way they're set up, they don’t give you the irresponsible, giddy tingle you're hoping for. The movie is set mostly in Chantilly, Paris, and San Francisco, and it’s full of bodies and vehicles diving, exploding, going up in flames. Christopher Walken is the chief villain; the ultra-blond psychopathic product of a Nazi doctor’s experiments, he mows people down casually, his expression jaded. And the director, John Glen, stages the slaughter scenes so apathetically that the picture itself seems dissociated. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen another movie in which race horses were mistreated and the director failed to work up any indignation. If Glen has any emotions about what he puts on the screen, he keeps them to himself.)
All that keeps A View to a Kill going is that it needs to reach a certain heft to fit into the series. As the villainess, Grace Jones, of the flat-top haircut and the stylized look of African sculpture, is indifferently good-humored the way Jane Russell used to be, and much too flaccid, and as the blond heroine Tanya Roberts (who has a disconcerting resemblance to Isabelle Adjani) is totally lacking in intensity—she goes from one life-threatening situation to another looking vaguely put out. About the most that can be said for Roger Moore, in his seventh go-round as Bond, is that he keeps his nose to the grindstone, permitting himself no expression except a faint bemusement. It used to be that we could count on Bond to deliver a few zingers, but this time the script (by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson) barely manages a little facetiousness. The film does come up with one visual zinger: in the small role of Jenny Flex, a stunning young model named Alison Doody comes up with a curvy walk that’s like sex on wheels.
Now, I've enjoyed Canby's last two reviews, but I can't agree with his take on OP. Meanwhile, Kael displays a much more astute reading of both OP and AVTAK, particularly in her notes about the female characters. They rank second to last and dead last on my list. Casual describes AVTAK very well. Mind, Alison Doody as Jenny Flex definitely deserves a mention. 😀
As much as I dislike Kael’s usual output the two reviews above are pretty much spot-on. Thanks for posting @Revelator
You're very welcome! While on the topic of AVTAK, here's another review. The author was not a film critic but he was a longtime newspaper man: Herb Caen, the legendary columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to producing nearly 60 years of columns, Caen was also an early American fan of Ian Fleming and devoted a couple columns to the books. In 1963 he interviewed Fleming, who returned the favor by writing an article for the Chronicle in praise of Caen.
So when A View to Kill had its world premiere at San Francisco's Palace of the Fine Arts, with Roger Moore and Cubby in attendance, Caen was there too. What did he think of the only Bond film set in his beloved city? Read on...
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For Your Eyes Only
By Herb Caen (San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1985)
With the enthusiastic cooperation of the Mayor and the police and fire departments, San Francisco is made to look like a loony-bin in the newest and possibly last James Bond film, A View to a Kill, an awkward movie with an awkward title. As I recall, author Ian Fleming’s original title for the flimsy short story on which this $30-million bombo is shakily based was With a View to a Kill, which scans a little more smoothly. It wasn't Fleming at his best but the movie it inspired may be James Bondage at its worst, except for the all-time stinker, Casino Royale, which, oddly, used only the title of Fleming's first historic best-seller.
It is an article of faith among civic leaders that having a movie made in your town is, by and of itself, A Good Thing. Some mumbojumble about identity, business, tourism, etc., but how many remember that Errol Flynn's classic Robin Hood was shot in Chico’s Bidwell Park? San Francisco, of course, has a lot more to offer than Chico, Velveeta jokes aside, and is ruthlessly exploited by every movie and TV maker this side of the Mitchell Brothers who can capture our publicity-crazed Mayor's ear. One can imagine her ecstasy upon learning that a Bond flick would be made in our own backyard, besides which she is said to be keen on Roger Moore, which is understandable.
In return for her unflagging enthusiasm for the Bond project, what do we get? A series of crashes in which our already shaky Police Dept. is made to look like raving incompetents at best and idiots at worst. Very funny, Chiefie, the way they drive their squad cars up the Lefty O'Doul Bridge on Third at China Basin as it is being raised. It is even funnier when they all slide down into each other. Best of all, the bridge's counterweight crushes the captain's car like an eggshell. Not only THAT, the actor playing the captain is a ringer for Chief Con Murphy! They had all been chasing Bond, James Bond, who had stolen a hook’n’ladder from the firemen fighting a blazing City Hall wherein a city official had just been murdered, and that brings up another point.
For reasons not entirely clear—but what is in a Bond flick?—the laughable villain, played with understandable embarrassment by Christopher Walken, pulls out a pistol and kills a city executive as he is seated behind his desk, American flag in the background. It could even be the mayor’s office, or a supervisor’s. Have memories of the Moscone-Milk murders already grown so dim? The Mayor, a woman of fine sensibilities, might have suggested that the killing take place elsewhere—or not at all, since it has nothing to do with the plot. By coincidence, and I realize nobody could have foreseen this, Wednesday, May 22, the day of the world premiere, would have been Harvey Milk's 55th birthday. There were no observances, unless you count this crass scene as one. And as City Hall burned on screen, a few remembered that May 21 was the seventh anniversary of the “White Night” riots during which police cars were set ablaze in the fury that followed Dan White's junk-food verdict.
Well, as the saying goes, it’s only a movie and a very tedious one. Unlike the first blockbusters—Doctor No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger—it is strangely slow, witless and charmless. A scene in a tunnel on the San Andreas Fault (?!) is straight out of Indiana Jones, with flood waters pouring through the shaft as the villainous Walken kills dozens with a submachine gun. In fact, there is more randumb violence in this Bond film than in any other, a sure sign of flagging inspiration. As for Roger Moore, he seems a delightful chap but there is no doubt he has passed his prime, unless we're talking about beef, of which he has a bit too much. He hasn’t got whatever made Sean Connery a believable 007, and to his credit, he knows it. Also in the film: Patrick Macnee, who played the suave Steed to Diana Rigg’s Mrs. Peel in the unforgettable Avengers TV series; he too has grown beefy. Come to think of it, Patrick McGoohan as Secret Agent, Roger Moore as The Saint and The Avengers may have constituted a TV mini-golden age.
The premiere Wednesday night at the Palace of Fine Arts was the usual embarrassing crush of teenagers screaming from behind barricades (they were screaming for Duran Duran, the rock group, not the movie stars) and cops looking a bit sheepish as limos rolled and cameras flashed. The film's producer, Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, now in his 70s with millions to match, looked weary—a man who has seen it all so many times; his old S.F. friend, Jimmy Flood, with whom he once sailed the Pacific, kept calling him “Mr. Cauliflower,” which drew a wan Broccolian smile. The Mayor made a gung-ho speech, blissfully unaware that whoever selects her clothes (Howdy Dowdy?) had once again betrayed her. Not only that, she has regressed to her short Planet of the Apes haircut. Maybe 007 can have a word with her.
And so the James Bond era draws to a close. The incredible is no longer credible and, with Britain reduced to a third-rate nation, the idea of a British secret agent saving the world becomes laughable. But I will never forget the excitement of that first novel, which I read in the late 1950s on a plane from London—what better setting?—or the impact of the Bondian theme music, still alive after being copied to death. It got every movie off to a brilliant start, even this one. The descent toward twilight comes later.
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Fun fact: Jimmy Flood's father, James L. Flood, built the Flood Building, a 12-story flatiron that survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and still stands today. I worked there for five years, before the rent became too high. So did Dashiell Hammett, back when he was a private eye, and if you visit the lobby you'll find a replica of the Maltese Falcon, made by Warner Brothers to publicize the movie. In the novel Sam Spade has lunch at John's Grill, which is right next to the Flood Building and still in operation.
Liked the fun fact, rolled my eyes at that review. No doubt everyone here knows the correct title of the short story, unlike Mr Caen, and likewise they know that CR67 did in fact contain more of it's literary source than AVTAK did.
But Bond geekery aside, that's a poor excuse for a review compared with the ones above. He's entitled to his opinions of course.