Bond Films: Octopussy

I sort of remember when Octopussy came it. It seemed sort of racy - had the word pussy in the titles, after all. The plot is kind of all over the place, due in part to the movie's plot being a mix of short stories. Like the titular character, Octopussy over-promises and under-delivers. After For Your Eyes Only, one might expect a bad-ass bond unraveling a plot to start World War III and get laid. Instead, he fumbles along and disarms a bomb while dressed as a clown.

The basic plot of Octopussy is: a nationalist Russian general's loses a debate about showing strength to NATO, and effectively goes rogue. Meanwhile, Agent 009 is killed trying to cross the East German border with a Faberge egg - one that turns out to be a fake. In the course of investigating 009's death, Bond follows the trail to a group of international smugglers who have enlisted the help of Octopussy (the girl), a hottie whose father was a spy killed in . .. somewhere. She has a complex and compelling backstory that gets compressed into two minutes of dialogue. Anyway, Bond figures out that 1) the Faberges are fakes being sold to finance the smuggling of nuclear weapons via a circus performing at an American airbase in West Germany. There's some sleight-of-hand with train cars, Bond dresses as a clown to escape the authorities, and the bomb is disarmed. Bond and Octopussy subsequently lead a crack squad of women acrobats in red tights in an assault on the villain's lair.

Octopussy has a lot of good elements, but it's really two stories: Octopussy's, and Bond's quest. The mad general is pretty one-dimensional, but the real villain is Afghan Kamal Khan. The circus elements completely undermine the seriousness of the plot - as well the all-girl ninja smuggler circus acrobat camp run. It's a weird combination of weird Bond and goofy Bond. The theme song doesn't help - Rita Coolidge singing "All Time High".

Octopussy can be skipped. Move along, nothing to see here.