You can't go home again - revisiting an old Bond

[Boromir006]

So the other night the fiancee went to bed early and I decided to catch up on some old Bond. (I've been trying to give her a sampling of all the different eras, but the only one she's enjoyed is Casino Royale.) For whatever reason I went with Octopussy.

Heavens to murgatroyd, that movie has not aged well. I didn't remember it being so... painfully... lugubriously... undendingly... slow! Just scene after scene after scene of absolutely nothing happening. One thing the early Connery films certainly did not suffer from was a lack of pace. But somewhere along the line it got dialed back to near zero. Maybe Roger Moore's age had something to do with it - as his films go on we find them padded out more with talky, expository scenes and less and less action.

The love story doesn't work at all. Bond and Octopussy seem interested in each other merely because they happen to be in the same room together. I don't buy the chemistry and I really cringe at her big dramatic moment which comes off as a hissy fit ("I don't have to apologize to you, a paid assassin, for what I am.") Kristina Wayborn is one of my favorite Bond girls in terms of sheer looks, but whoever was dubbing her voice has as much emotional range as a piece of drywall. And after her seduction scene with Bond her relevance to the story disappears completely, yet she still pops up in scene after scene as nothing more than a curvaceous prop.

I've said enough about what I think of John Glen's sense of humor in many other posts. But this time around he really outdoes himself, going for gags at the expense of the desperately poor - with a very 1800's colonial British attitude. In fact, watching the movie you'd have thought Gandhi never existed and India was still under British rule. At least there are no incompetent overacting police captains in this one.

The villains, despite their plot for killing thousands of people, are very dull. Kamal Khan talks a lot, glowers a few times, and that's about it. General Orlov seems to belong in a different movie altogether. Gobinda isn't very menacing and the knife-throwing twins are forgettable.

It's easy to dump on Roger Moore but I felt for him in this one. He was doing the best he could with substandard material and is easily the best part of the movie. Actually one person who really drops the ball in this movie is the usually reliable John Barry. His use of lilting strings all over the score (perhaps in reaction to Bill Conti's overuse of disco in the previous film) makes the movie seem that much slower. And the title song is easily the worst in the Bond canon. Granted they were working with the handicap of an unwieldy title, but he and lyricist Tim Rice didn't have to give us the blandest of 80's love ballads that would better fit something with Jennifer Beals in it than what's supposed to be an action-adventure spy movie. The only memorable thing about "All Time High" is that Japanese censors thought the lyrics were about drugs.

All that said, I still thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread when I was younger. Oh well...

[Kara Milovy]

Many of your points are excellent, but I think you're being too hard on the movie.

Certainly the thing I hate most about OCT is the racism (or colonialism, however you want to view it). India is treated badly. But I think many of the story elements do work, and, while no one mistakes Maud Adams for a talented actress, I think her dramatic scene comes off well. And I love the mad General Orlov.

[Cooper]

Ouch!!! I have a soft spot in my heart for Octopussy since it was the first Bond I saw on the big screen.

I haven't seen it in it's entirety in a long time but having seen scenes here and there among the many, MANY Bond marathons on Spike and AMC, what I saw held up. I'll have to pop my DVD in for a viewing to see if the story structure still works.

Having said that, there is one line that makes me laugh (in disbelief) after Bond beats Khan in the casino. Bond gives the winnings to his Indian liason and says, "That ought to keep in you in curry." Yow! Yeah, there's that 1800 colonial era mentality. ... but you know what? Fleming's Bond said a LOT worse and that's part of his charm... As M said in Goldeneye, he's a dinosaur.

[WhiteKnight]

I'm going to have to agree with the other two posters. While Octopussy isn't nearly the same calibre film as Casino Royale I think it's easily the best of Moore's entries in terms of plot, structure and acting.

I prefer the slower pace as opposed to being beaten over the head with action for action's sake as audiences were in his earlier outings. As for Maud Adams, if I stand her up beside other Bond girls of the Moore era (i.e Barbara Bach, Tanya Roberts or Grace Jones) I'd have to say she's got them all eating their hearts out. Are you really saying you think the Adams tantrum is less believable than Bach's threat to kill Bond at the midway point of TSWLM? Was Roberts any less guilty of being eye candy in VTK than Waybourn was in Octopussy? I don't think so, but I am just a majority of one here.
As to the villians, I find them no more or less bland than Stromberg, Drax or Cristatos in the previous three films. The Octopussy villians (and Cristatos to be fair) have the redeming characteristic that their scheme(s) don't require the same suspension of disbelief as do their predecessors. Honestly, I think jewelry smuggling is a lot more plausible than a plot to steal nuclear submarines to bring forth armageddon or breeding a race of superhumans to repopulate earth after wiping out it's inhabitants from outerspace.

No denying the colonialistic attitude of Octopussy, though. It's pretty blatant throughout the film. CR at least didn't resort to stereotyping or making fun of an entire race of people by portraying its terrorists as arabs.

Speaking of CR, no doubt it's better paced than Octopussy, but I tend to think even it suffers from a bit of bleh during the hugely overlong Miami sequence and the poker tournament. Nonetheless, the story doesn't strike me as any more believable than Octopussy's. The hardest part for me in going back to the Moore era following the release of CR is that the acting isn't in the same universe. Standing Moore and Craig side by side is a big time apples to oranges situation that is the biggest hurdle I have when I go back to watch films of the Moore era. Not to mention you've got Judi Dench as M, clearly a cut above Robert Brown's incarnation, Eva Green as your female lead, and a whole host of acting talent that burys anybody Octopussy has to offer.

I guess since Octopussy is my favorite of the Moore films I'd just rather see somebody take the piss out of TMWTGG, TSWLM or Moonraker than FYEO or Octopussy. I'm not saying it's even close to the calibre film as CR, but if you want to give an example of why it's hard to go back to the early movies I think you can come up with a better one than Octopussy.

[Daltons Chin Dimple]

I used to think Moonraker was the best movie ever made, and preferred "nice" Jaws as the bumbling bufoon rather than the towering, glowering killing machine.

I didn't know what sex was, but wanted to opportunity to deliver one liners that might have got me some.

I thought the Close Encounters theme and the Magnificent Seven references were the cleverest thing I had ever seen in a movie.

I soooooooo badly wanted a Gondola that doubled as a hovercraft, and hey, look, it's the same wine drinking guy as TSWLM !!! Cool !

Double taking pigeon was the height of comedy.

Christ...... did I spend my childhood on drugs ?

[WhiteKnight]

There was a time, probably in my mid to late teens, when Moore's films, all of them, were perfectly acceptable. At some point, however, I decided that reading was actually cool and got hold of some books by a guy called Fleming. That's probably when the credibility of movies like Moonraker sank straight to the bottom of the outhouse.

In other words, I think we'll skip tarring and feathering you for admitting Moonraker was cool back in the day and actually give you kudos for having the guts to admit it.

[conman]

OP has always been a mixed bag for me. I wasn't into the world of Bond until I casually saw TWINE in theaters. After that I took advantage of the "15 Days of 007" marathon on TBS to catch most of the original films. Several months later I happened to catch OP on late night TV. It was the last of the original 16 films I had yet to see.

I have a strong love/hate relationship for it. The girls are great but the villains are overall weak. The story with the fabrege egg gets pretty confusing at times. But this film definitely ranks as one of his best 3 (with TSWLM and FYEO included in that mix).

[Boromir006]

I'd just rather see somebody take the piss out of TMWTGG, TSWLM or Moonraker than FYEO or Octopussy.I'm not really that fond of For Your Eyes Only either - and in a way, it's for the same reason as my opinion of Octopussy. It's that the ingredients of a great movie are all there but they just don't gell. FYEO has that terrific scene with kicking the car over the cliff, Roger Moore at his best and some good supporting performances, but a plot with a volcano-sized hole in it and John Glen's asinine paint-by-numbers direction, particularly in the action sequences.

I have a soft spot for the latter two 70's Moore Bonds because Ken Adam is a genius and sometimes you can get so caught up in admiring his sets that you tend to overlook the weaknesses of the rest of the movies. The Man with the Golden Gun is a crap movie top to bottom with the sole shining light being Christopher Lee's performance. Lee really is an amazing actor and doesn't get the credit he deserves. He has been in some really awful movies and been forced to deliver dreadful dialogue but always makes it sound convincing and real. And seems to be a genuinely good man as well.

I wasn't really using Octopussy as an example to prove anything, it was more a critique of the movie itself seen through older eyes. But it does seem that the 60's Bonds hold up a lot better today than the 80's ones do.