I went to see The World Is Not Enough without bothering with reviews beforehand, and I came away satisfied. *Then* I read the comments and reviews--and found myself sorely puzzled. The best Bond ever, the worst Bond ever... Richards good, Richards bad, Coltrane good, Coltrane bad, R good, R bad, plot good, plot bad, action good, action bad... about the only thing everyone seems to agree on is that it's a Bond flick. Which indeed it is. Let's have a little perspective, please.
This being a Bond flick, we can expect a few standards... Many high-speed chases and explosions. One or two beautiful women in tight clothing. At least one villain with delusions of grandeur. A complex and over-the-top plot to take over the world that would make the Brain of Animaniacs fame say, "Huh?" Tongue-in-cheek innuendo and bad puns. Spiffy gadgets. Narrow escapes. Lots of dead bodies and just as many slick one-liners. Opulent surroundings.
Boiled down, what this amounts to is: These movies are not meant to be taken seriously. The plots are unrealistic, the main character is shallow, there are holes in the continuity that you could drive a Hummer through, such as how as James Bond stayed 30something since the sixties? If these things bother you, you have no business watching Bond movies at all.
Now.
The boat and ski chases dragged out a bit longer than they needed to, but Bond's inventive (and, needless to say, unrealistic--that's the whole point, folks) uses of his not-entirely-functional speedboat and skis earn a grin. For once we see him get ruffled, thrown for a loop, and in one memorable instance, beaten the living daylights out of in a fall from an exploding hot air balloon. The legendary savoire faire slips a bit, and Bond comes across as a bit more human; a guy who's got slick moves, but occasionally gets overconfident and--my God--sometimes makes mistakes. He gets water up his nose when the prototype boat he swiped from Q doesn't work entirely as expected, and actually gets injured (beyond artistic and superficial facial bleeding). In the process of being sneaky and properly spy-like, he discovers a shady situation--and gets neck-deep into it before he finally figures out what's actually going *on.* Bond strolls blithely in where angels fear to tread.
Sophie Marceau is excellent as the beautiful but dangerous Elektra King, who manages to make my skin crawl. Her male counterpart, Reynard, is regrettably underused, his supposedly superhuman abilities never coming into play. Denise Richards is a letdown after the outstanding performance of Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies, but it's unfair to blame this just on her; Christmas Jones was written in, so I'm told, solely to produce the necessary jiggly bits. Though even more sadly underused than Reynard, she's still a refreshing change from the swimsuit-shrinkwrapped brainless eye candy of earlier Bond films.
The submarine sequence did leave something to be desired, offering neither continuation and resolution of plot lines beyond the major 'save the world' plot, nor slick action. Not until that point do I find myself regretting Bond's newly-acquired humanity; he and Dr. Jones bumble around for a while before finally encountering the villain and doing battle. Christmas Jones could get in some action of her own at that point, and does not; Bond's injury could be exploited and is not; Reynard's much-touted superhuman strength and lack of sensation *ought* to be in evidence, and are not. In a last-ditch improvisation, Bond offs the bad guy and saves the day, and we're treated to the latest results of Bond writers' neverending efforts to find new and unusual ways for the villain to get iced. (Can't James just shoot him for a change?) I enjoyed the ploy of Bond firing himself and his curvy companion out the torpedo tube, but that went by so quickly as to almost be overlooked.
Q was, as always, wonderful, and I look forward to seeing more of John Cleese as R. M, though given more screen time than in the previous two films, was a disappointment. Gone is the tough, no-nonsense 'evil queen of numbers' who gave 007--and everyone else--hell; this M is consumed by guilt, wound neatly around Elektra's delicate fingers, and played like a drum. She walks blithely into a bad situation and ought to have been kicking herself for her sheer stupidity--the head of MI6 should know better. When she finally does realize she's in trouble, she fumbles, wrings her hands, and only manages enough ingenuity to let Bond know where she is so he can come save her. I'm sure if he'd been in her shoes, he'd have been out and kicking butt before she could do more than notice his absence--assuming he was dumb enough to walk into the situation in the first place. *This* is the M who, when told she didn't have the balls for her job, replied frostily, "Maybe so, but the advantage is that I don't have to think with them all the time"? Dame Judi Dench should have been put to better use; with the part she's given, she can't show to advantage the way Brosnan and Marceau do.
All in all, The World Is Not Enough is a good, solid addition to the Bond legacy, and I look forward to seeing the new trend towards deepening the plots and the character continued. The plot was better and more memorable than that of Goldeneye, but the action scenes fall a good bit short of Tomorrow Never Dies, and only a few characters are used as well as they could be.
This being a Bond flick, we can expect a few standards... Many high-speed chases and explosions. One or two beautiful women in tight clothing. At least one villain with delusions of grandeur. A complex and over-the-top plot to take over the world that would make the Brain of Animaniacs fame say, "Huh?" Tongue-in-cheek innuendo and bad puns. Spiffy gadgets. Narrow escapes. Lots of dead bodies and just as many slick one-liners. Opulent surroundings.
Boiled down, what this amounts to is: These movies are not meant to be taken seriously. The plots are unrealistic, the main character is shallow, there are holes in the continuity that you could drive a Hummer through, such as how as James Bond stayed 30something since the sixties? If these things bother you, you have no business watching Bond movies at all.
Now.
The boat and ski chases dragged out a bit longer than they needed to, but Bond's inventive (and, needless to say, unrealistic--that's the whole point, folks) uses of his not-entirely-functional speedboat and skis earn a grin. For once we see him get ruffled, thrown for a loop, and in one memorable instance, beaten the living daylights out of in a fall from an exploding hot air balloon. The legendary savoire faire slips a bit, and Bond comes across as a bit more human; a guy who's got slick moves, but occasionally gets overconfident and--my God--sometimes makes mistakes. He gets water up his nose when the prototype boat he swiped from Q doesn't work entirely as expected, and actually gets injured (beyond artistic and superficial facial bleeding). In the process of being sneaky and properly spy-like, he discovers a shady situation--and gets neck-deep into it before he finally figures out what's actually going *on.* Bond strolls blithely in where angels fear to tread.
Sophie Marceau is excellent as the beautiful but dangerous Elektra King, who manages to make my skin crawl. Her male counterpart, Reynard, is regrettably underused, his supposedly superhuman abilities never coming into play. Denise Richards is a letdown after the outstanding performance of Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies, but it's unfair to blame this just on her; Christmas Jones was written in, so I'm told, solely to produce the necessary jiggly bits. Though even more sadly underused than Reynard, she's still a refreshing change from the swimsuit-shrinkwrapped brainless eye candy of earlier Bond films.
The submarine sequence did leave something to be desired, offering neither continuation and resolution of plot lines beyond the major 'save the world' plot, nor slick action. Not until that point do I find myself regretting Bond's newly-acquired humanity; he and Dr. Jones bumble around for a while before finally encountering the villain and doing battle. Christmas Jones could get in some action of her own at that point, and does not; Bond's injury could be exploited and is not; Reynard's much-touted superhuman strength and lack of sensation *ought* to be in evidence, and are not. In a last-ditch improvisation, Bond offs the bad guy and saves the day, and we're treated to the latest results of Bond writers' neverending efforts to find new and unusual ways for the villain to get iced. (Can't James just shoot him for a change?) I enjoyed the ploy of Bond firing himself and his curvy companion out the torpedo tube, but that went by so quickly as to almost be overlooked.
Q was, as always, wonderful, and I look forward to seeing more of John Cleese as R. M, though given more screen time than in the previous two films, was a disappointment. Gone is the tough, no-nonsense 'evil queen of numbers' who gave 007--and everyone else--hell; this M is consumed by guilt, wound neatly around Elektra's delicate fingers, and played like a drum. She walks blithely into a bad situation and ought to have been kicking herself for her sheer stupidity--the head of MI6 should know better. When she finally does realize she's in trouble, she fumbles, wrings her hands, and only manages enough ingenuity to let Bond know where she is so he can come save her. I'm sure if he'd been in her shoes, he'd have been out and kicking butt before she could do more than notice his absence--assuming he was dumb enough to walk into the situation in the first place. *This* is the M who, when told she didn't have the balls for her job, replied frostily, "Maybe so, but the advantage is that I don't have to think with them all the time"? Dame Judi Dench should have been put to better use; with the part she's given, she can't show to advantage the way Brosnan and Marceau do.
All in all, The World Is Not Enough is a good, solid addition to the Bond legacy, and I look forward to seeing the new trend towards deepening the plots and the character continued. The plot was better and more memorable than that of Goldeneye, but the action scenes fall a good bit short of Tomorrow Never Dies, and only a few characters are used as well as they could be.
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