Reviews

I went to see The World Is Not Enough without bothering with reviews beforehand, and I came away satisfied. *Then* I read the comments and reviews--and found myself sorely puzzled. The best Bond ever, the worst Bond ever... Richards good, Richards bad, Coltrane good, Coltrane bad, R good, R bad, plot good, plot bad, action good, action bad... about the only thing everyone seems to agree on is that it's a Bond flick. Which indeed it is. Let's have a little perspective, please.

This being a Bond flick, we can expect a few standards... Many high-speed chases and explosions. One or two beautiful women in tight clothing. At least one villain with delusions of grandeur. A complex and over-the-top plot to take over the world that would make the Brain of Animaniacs fame say, "Huh?" Tongue-in-cheek innuendo and bad puns. Spiffy gadgets. Narrow escapes. Lots of dead bodies and just as many slick one-liners. Opulent surroundings.

Boiled down, what this amounts to is: These movies are not meant to be taken seriously. The plots are unrealistic, the main character is shallow, there are holes in the continuity that you could drive a Hummer through, such as how as James Bond stayed 30something since the sixties? If these things bother you, you have no business watching Bond movies at all.

Now.

The boat and ski chases dragged out a bit longer than they needed to, but Bond's inventive (and, needless to say, unrealistic--that's the whole point, folks) uses of his not-entirely-functional speedboat and skis earn a grin. For once we see him get ruffled, thrown for a loop, and in one memorable instance, beaten the living daylights out of in a fall from an exploding hot air balloon. The legendary savoire faire slips a bit, and Bond comes across as a bit more human; a guy who's got slick moves, but occasionally gets overconfident and--my God--sometimes makes mistakes. He gets water up his nose when the prototype boat he swiped from Q doesn't work entirely as expected, and actually gets injured (beyond artistic and superficial facial bleeding). In the process of being sneaky and properly spy-like, he discovers a shady situation--and gets neck-deep into it before he finally figures out what's actually going *on.* Bond strolls blithely in where angels fear to tread.

Sophie Marceau is excellent as the beautiful but dangerous Elektra King, who manages to make my skin crawl. Her male counterpart, Reynard, is regrettably underused, his supposedly superhuman abilities never coming into play. Denise Richards is a letdown after the outstanding performance of Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies, but it's unfair to blame this just on her; Christmas Jones was written in, so I'm told, solely to produce the necessary jiggly bits. Though even more sadly underused than Reynard, she's still a refreshing change from the swimsuit-shrinkwrapped brainless eye candy of earlier Bond films.

The submarine sequence did leave something to be desired, offering neither continuation and resolution of plot lines beyond the major 'save the world' plot, nor slick action. Not until that point do I find myself regretting Bond's newly-acquired humanity; he and Dr. Jones bumble around for a while before finally encountering the villain and doing battle. Christmas Jones could get in some action of her own at that point, and does not; Bond's injury could be exploited and is not; Reynard's much-touted superhuman strength and lack of sensation *ought* to be in evidence, and are not. In a last-ditch improvisation, Bond offs the bad guy and saves the day, and we're treated to the latest results of Bond writers' neverending efforts to find new and unusual ways for the villain to get iced. (Can't James just shoot him for a change?) I enjoyed the ploy of Bond firing himself and his curvy companion out the torpedo tube, but that went by so quickly as to almost be overlooked.

Q was, as always, wonderful, and I look forward to seeing more of John Cleese as R. M, though given more screen time than in the previous two films, was a disappointment. Gone is the tough, no-nonsense 'evil queen of numbers' who gave 007--and everyone else--hell; this M is consumed by guilt, wound neatly around Elektra's delicate fingers, and played like a drum. She walks blithely into a bad situation and ought to have been kicking herself for her sheer stupidity--the head of MI6 should know better. When she finally does realize she's in trouble, she fumbles, wrings her hands, and only manages enough ingenuity to let Bond know where she is so he can come save her. I'm sure if he'd been in her shoes, he'd have been out and kicking butt before she could do more than notice his absence--assuming he was dumb enough to walk into the situation in the first place. *This* is the M who, when told she didn't have the balls for her job, replied frostily, "Maybe so, but the advantage is that I don't have to think with them all the time"? Dame Judi Dench should have been put to better use; with the part she's given, she can't show to advantage the way Brosnan and Marceau do.

All in all, The World Is Not Enough is a good, solid addition to the Bond legacy, and I look forward to seeing the new trend towards deepening the plots and the character continued. The plot was better and more memorable than that of Goldeneye, but the action scenes fall a good bit short of Tomorrow Never Dies, and only a few characters are used as well as they could be.

After seeing a few episodes from the first two seasons on Cartoon Network, I wasn't *that* impressed by ReBoot. The completely CG animation was interesting but a little jarring, the plots--what I saw of them through my on-and-off-viewing--seemed thin, the puns got real old real fast, and Enzo bugged me tremendously. (I have never been a fan of the bratty-kid-demigenius hero.)

But the third season made an addict of me. The darker, grittier, more adult tone was much more attractive than the somewhat childish tone of the first two seasons. Enzo and AndrAIa became much, much cooler (I won't go into detail, in respect for those who haven't seen the third season yet). Bob went from wisecracking goody-goody to white knight, and they all gained in sex appeal. Furthermore, the CG animation gained in sophistication, making the show much easier on the eyes, and the plot gained in depth.

There are a few things about the end of the third season that bugged me (the resurrection of little Enzo, in particular) but I'm looking forward to the fourth season and would cheerfully recommend ReBoot to anyone.

Compared to previous attempts by competing studios to break Disney's stranglehold on the animated film market, The Swan Princess really is a good movie. The animation does not quite have Disney's finesse and got a little rough in places, but was still watchable and generally pleasing to the eye, unlike, say, Thumbelina. The songs, though not particularly memorable and vaguely cheesy in the manner of much older animated flicks, did not bring the movie to a grinding halt and actually managed to, in general, help it along. It has a plot.

That's not to say that The Swan Princess doesn't have its problems, mostly in its characters. The titular lead, Princess Odette, is a flat failure as a heroine--she never *does* anything except lead her one true love, Prince Derrick, to her--and even then, she only does that because her animal friends, Puffin, Speed the turtle, and Jean-Bob the frog, cook up the plan for her.

Derrick is much more likeable, and though throughout most of the movie he is a flaming idiot, he is a likeable and sympathetic flaming idiot--and he does learn. His mistakes are, as a rule, human and understandable, and in the end it is he who saves the day and finally learns the movie's apparent lesson--that beauty is not all there is in matters of love or anything else.

The development of their relationship is refreshing--rather than falling in love at first sight, they start out hating each other with a passion, and it takes them years--spanned capably over the course of one amusing if sugary song--to realize that they do love each other. And then Derrick blows it(!), and spends the rest of the movie scrambling to recover from his mistake.

The end battle was satisfying, though in general I prefer for the heroine to help save their hides in some manner. The movie-makers were not afraid to beat the living daylights out of their hero, and though the save he pulls in the end is nothing short of miraculous, it was at least shown much earlier to be within his princely capabilities.

Despite its flaws, I found The Swan Princess to be a satisfying and re-watchable movie--though I did catch myself agreeing with Derrick's comment (stated early in the movie) that he could do much better.