User Reviews

The chemistry that director Robert Altman created in "M*A*S*H" between Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland as two boisterous Korean War surgeons wasn't replicated by "The Empire Strikes Back" helmer Irvin Kershner with the same spontaneity in "S*P*Y*S*. A campy send-up of worldwide espionage thrillers, this lame-brained, low-brow spy saga unfolds quickly with an explosion before it lays its buffoonish humor on with a trowel. Sadly, this breezy, 87-minute comedy neither entertains nor distinguishes itself in the long line of post-007 spy spoofs. Happily, Kershner never lets the nonsensical action slow down, but the script never develops much sympathy about the fate of our idiotic protagonists. Gould and Sutherland respectively are cast as bungling CIA spies named Griff and Bruland in this outing that opens in an outdoor Parisian "pissoir" where our protagonists are nearly blown to bits by accident. One of their own, a clueless British agent, Hessler (Shane Rimmer of "The Spy Who Loved Me"), got his orders mixed up. Mind you, this doesn't qualify as a James Bond level spoof because our heroes aren't equipped with exotic gadgets to bail them out of any conceivable tight spot they encounter. The main villain in this uninspired comedy of errors is Martinson (Joss Ackland of "The Black Windmill") who repeatedly clashes with our heroes about their shenanigans. Meanwhile, Kershner and his scenarists were clearly grasping to ridicule the genre as well as conjure up amusing laughs. Basically, little about "S*P*Y*S* is remotely memorable except for the whirlwind momentum with which this romp unwinds. Kershner and company look like they thought they knew what they were doing. The international cast is above reproach, and some of the scenes are hilarious, but the overall effect is one of abject absurdity. The scene at Martinson's wedding exemplifies slapstick at its craziest, while the scene with Gould searching for a microdot in dog feces is ridiculous. Altogether, this espionage potboiler never generates much suspense, though Gould and Sutherland look like they were enjoying themselves.

This very 1970's spy comedy was clearly marketed 90% on the strength of the star pairing of Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould, two of the coolest, hippest, "with-it" male leads of the decade (of the type who would only be used in supporting roles in our more conventional times). Unfortunately, they forgot to add a script to the mixture. The "plot" of "S*P*Y*S" is rambling and confusing at best. But that's not the worst thing about this film - the worst thing is how dismally unfunny it is. I mean, it is supposed to be a comedy, but you'd be hard-pressed to name more than 2 funny scenes within its 100 minutes. Only Remy Julienne's expertise with car stunts shines through. * out of 4.

Ah, the Cold War.

Well, it never really ended, but let's look back on when it was really being fought in 1974.

An accident causes two KGB agents to be mistakenly killed during a failed attempt to help a Russian athlete named Sevitsky (Michael Petrovich) defect to the West. That means the U. S. has to have two agents killed to settle the scales of political justice with Bruland (Donald Sutherland) and Griff (Elliot Gould) picked as the patsies. They aren't friends but must learn to work together if they want to survive.

S*P*Y*S* was directed by Irvin Kershner, who made way better movies than this like The Empire Strikes Back, The Eyes of Laura Mars, Never Say Never Again and RoboCop 2. I kind of love that he played a waiter in Steven Seagal's only directorial effort, On Deadly Ground.

This was written by Lawrence J. Cohen and Fred Freeman, who wrote Start the Revolution Without Me together, as well as Malcolm Marmorstein, who along with writing Pete's Dragon was also a writer on Dark Shadows.

Originally called Wet Stuff, this was changed to have those stars in the title to attempt to get back the magic of Gould and Sutherland in M*A*S*H*. Kershner wasn't happy and said, "I started to make a film that was a little black comedy, and I empathized that it had no relationship to Robert Altman's M*A*S*H*, in which, of course, they'd been teamed so brilliantly. The original title was Wet Stuff meaning blood, and the studio promised that there would be no attempt to compare it to M*A*S*H* in the publicity. Because it wasn't like that. It wasn't that kind of freewheeling film. There was no time, nor the budget to do that sort of film anyway. Now, there were many places where they hadn't seen M*A*S*H*, like parts of South America, Scandinavia, or Germany. In those areas they lovedS*PY*S*. Actually, the film made a lot of money, and it got some great reviews in countries where it wasn't compared to M*A*S*H*."

I mean, they even used the same voice over artist in the trailer!

I also love that Variety cut to the chase with what this was all about: "a series of bomb explosions, lavatory homicide, police torture, kinky sex, a car chase, a search through canine feces and a disrupted church wedding ceremony."

It is, however, the only movie that Joss Ackland and his daughter Melanie appeared in together. And hey - Zouzou is in it, a style icon, a friend of rock stars, a relentless nightclubber and the female Marlon Brando whose career was derailed by heroin.