The World is Not Enough goes to show again that when it comes to brains, the bad guy is always way smarter than the good guys. In Star Wars, Darth Vader had the Death Star and those giant walking tanks on the Hoth planet in Empire Strikes Back. The good guys had ewoks and grappling hooks. In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the bad guys had a big tank. Indy only had a whip. And so it is in the James Bond movies. Never send a guy with a gun to shoot Bond when twenty men in flying hover jet-skis can do the trick. Instead of a sharp-shooter, they send a helicopter with a giant buzz-saw attached.

I really ought to form an Evil Consortium. Since I am not too bright, I could obviously kill Bond, James Bond with simple ease. No lasers on my guns to give myself away with the red dot. No fancy homing-beacons so Bond can track my nuclear devices all over creation. No thugs with solid gold teeth. Remember the "Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?/No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" gag? Goldfinger was so friggin' bright, he tried to saw Bond in half with a laser, and of course James escaped. Just shoot him! A child of six could do it these days.

But I digress. . . .

The World is Not Enough (TWNE) had the usual great stuff. The mountain ski chase. The boat chase. The car chase. The best part was the superfluous men whose job is to walk back and forth across the street with water melons, crates of chickens, and glasslates for Bond to drive his BMW through. The thugs are back, too, and of course they are Russian, since that is your most politically correct bet. That fat ex-KGB gangster guy from the last James Bond movie is back, this time with a heart of gold. The bad buys get kinder and kinder as they get older. I guess they become sentimental.

What I don't understand is why:

-at the opening, there is a superflous scene where scientists in the South Pacific make a singing robot with a great ass who blows up the theater. Why go through the expense adn bother of making a singing robot with a great ass, when you could save millions of dollars by just planting a bomb in the theater to begin with. And why the hell was this in the movie at all, since it had nothing to do with the plot? There is that excess of ingenuity again.

-Why the 'Q' retrospective. I like Desmond Llewellyn as much as the next guy, and a Bond movie won't be the same without him. But after the singing robot intro, they (on the rental version at least) have a five minute Q retrospective that leaves you with a tear in your eye before they move on to the movie. They might have done that at the very end, or perhaps at the very beginning.

-When M1 is discussing Reynauld (or whatever his name is), the principal bad guy, they have a holographic image of his head like Admiral Akbar's hologram of the Death Star in Return of the Jedi. I think a drawing on a blackboard would save the same purpose, and save the British government (whom American taxpayers are probably subsidizing) millions of dollars. But this is just a fiscal conservative speaking.

-'Q' is planning on retiring, so instead of replacing him with a genius, they get John Cleese as 'R', the fumbling, bumbling scientist. Very odd. Cleese as Sheriff Langston in the western classic Silverado was a stretch, but as a James Bond scientist was just plain wierd. Why not Jerry Lewis as the Nutty Professor or Egon from Ghostbusters, for that matter, to fit the bill?

-Dr. Christmas Jones. As Bond women go, she is the best. As eye-candy, she single-handedly justified $3 of the rental price. Remember the estate in the mojave desert in Moonraker with the beautiful 22 year old women scientists? I guess she had the same role in TWNE. You would expect M-1 to see a pattern and stake out all 22 year old PhD's with incredible T&A value (just as they would for six foot five giants with extraordinary strength and steel teeth, Koreans in wing collars and bowlers, or billionaires in Nehru jackets). I volunteer for staking out the 22 year old PhD's, and I'll pay for the privilege. I just need James' x-ray glasses.

-Judith Dench as 'M'. Or Dame Judith Dench now, since she was given an OM or DCBE or whatever knighthoods are called for women. In the first movie (the name of which escapes me), she had wontons of steel. In this one, she was fairly matronly.

But I am nit-picking. All in all, it was a good movie, due in large measure to Dr. Christmas Jones's T&A factor. She is more buxom in the pictures on TWNE posters, but in spite of that: Was it not the philosopher Benny Hill who said 'I'd buy that for a dollar.' Is was another philosopher J. J. Evans who would say of her: Dy-no-mite! But the salient point is: as long as James Bond's enemies are smarter than he is, James will always evade death. And I, for one, am glad, since I am hoping James will take on the World Crime League in his next movie.

Michael Evans

Thanks for the review Micah! Remember, if you would like to submit something, just drop me a line at gleep9@hotmail.com. Now ride that rocket powered spy boat on back to either the second movie or main page.

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