Rating: ★★★½ (3.5/5)
I don’t know why this movie gets the hate that it does. It’s rated as rotten with the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes at a 59%. Yet the critics, for once, rate it actually higher at 64%. I’m more in line with the critics, if maybe even a bit higher.
I get that this movie is the worst of the Sean Connery films, but I’d say its far from bad. I had a good time with it. That being said, this all comes down to what makes a Bond movie. This has all the ingredients for a great Bond film: an interesting villain in Blofeld, cool gadgets, Sean Connery, women. Okay that last one is a stretch because the writers had no idea what to do with women at this age of cinema, particularly with James Bond. All in all though, this has the stuff of a good Bond movie, it’s just the decisions made that I think knock it down a few rungs.
There’s a lot more campiness in this movie. There are goofier things happening here than what you would want in your serious spy flick. The moon car that Bond drives around in for a portion of this movie stands out as a definite goofy moment. Then of course there is a the car chase that goes on far too long and finds itself in Dukes of Hazzard territory with the amount of vehicular shenanigans happening. The mustang doesn’t fit Bond either, even though he tries.
The story on the whole is simple, and it definitely wants to be a crowd pleaser, expanding its audience to more than just the Bond lovers. This is a movie they want you to be able to take your grandparents to and them understand and have a good time without having to think to hard.
I think that at the end of the day, this isn’t a bad movie. But it might be a bad Bond movie. Or at least less good than the rest of the movies that Sean Connery starred in. This was his return after taking a break and letting George Lazenby have a crack at it with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. When George left, the producers went back to the well with the same team that did Goldfinger, thinking they’d be able to recapture the magic, and they were slightly successful, but they just went more cartoonish than they needed to.
Sean Connery gets a lot of flack for “phoning it in” on this one, but I disagree whole heartedly with that assessment. I believe he played to the script. He leaned in on what the movie demanded and the tone that it wanted. There’s a phrase in music that when you’re playing your instrument, you do it to the service of the song. You don’t play to show off your skills, you play what you need because the song demands it. I think Connery took that approach here. He acted to serve the script and the movie. If he had played it super straight the whole time, it would have been even more jarring. I think he had a good time here and it shows.
I liked this one.
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