A View to a Zimmer Frame
[spoilers follow]
At one stage, Tanya Roberts apologises to her grandpa's ashes when she knocks the vase. “Sorry Grandpa,” she says, and you have to double take to be sure she didn't mean Moore.
It's a common complaint about this film but it's fully justified. Moore creaks arthritically through a film that is the phrase "seemed like a good idea at the time" writ large. You can smell the talc and that's not what you want in a sexbomb spy.
You won't want Tanya Roberts either tbh. I hope the pay was good because it's not the kind of work she'll look back on with pride. She is absolutely the female sidekick par excellence. She spends the whole film shrieking and gasping and has close to no agency. And she's supposed to be a world-renowned geologist. Look, we do get it. This is a sexist paradise, where women are eye candy and very little more. But it doesn't take much to provide them with some internal power and agency, as the great Eva Green or Judi Dench show.
So Moore's too old and Roberts just a skirt he drags around. How about the actual film? Does it hold up? Well, no. The plot was written on a napkin and it doesn't even have any good setpieces. The action is lazy, mostly because Moore isn't up to it and the demands that he win stretch credibility. For instance, at the end Bond and Zorin fight it out atop a pipe for some reason. But we all know Chris Walken would kick Moore's ass.
Talking of Walken, he's well rubbish and it's not his fault. The character is awesome, all sneering and arch. But he gets no love from the writers. And he's the apogee of the "why didn't he just shoot him?" Bond villain. Such a waste. Also wasted is Grace Jones, who looks cool but my god how good that character *could* have been.
Moore's strength in Bond was always his ready wit. But here it comes over as creepy. When he comes onto women, it's a bit like the funny uncle at the wedding and it makes no sense that the women don't cringe in disgust and embarrassment. He also spends the whole film in a jacket my own grandad would have worn if he wanted to look "cool".
And I'm not kidding about cringing women. Roberts looks like she had to be paid to get close to Bond and Fiona Fullerton (utterly wasted and looking so good she could star in a Robert Palmer video) actually seems to flinch at one point. Look, as I age, I appreciate that young women can (and should) be interested in older men. I encourage it. But they have to actually be feeling it, right?
Okay, so let me just say to finish up, Roger Moore was Bond when I was a kid. I loved a lot of his work (I didn't have any idea what sexism was and, you know, I'm white and shit, so funny foreigners and stuff were hilarious and different then). But even then I knew something was *off* about this film. What I realise now when I watch it again is that something is *everything*. It's pure balls. D/E. D for drag it out and E for execute it. Top end for Walken/Jones. Bottom end for Roberts. Special Hello milady for Fullerton, still among the very hottest Bond girls and as I said too good for this rubbish.
posted by Dr Zen @ 8:08 pm
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