Review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) by Vidyabum — 22 Oct 2021

Having watched 25 Bonds from Dr.No to Skyfall, I place this one at 9/25.

This is a movie that gets a lot of flak for having had a completely inexperienced actor replacing then-only actor of the series, Sean Connery.

Let me say that it's actually quite irrelevant: while George Lazenby was indeed inexperienced, several of the actors around him, particularly his love interest, are also perfectly poor actors that do not manage to run the movie one bit.

The biggest problem is not Lazenby's acting, it's that they're asking him to play a romance with a lady who also doesn't manage to pour any belief in the romance.

With the romance falling flat, we are left with a very dumb plot where Blofeld, who in the previous movie was a criminal mastermind holding power over many of the main villains of previous movies, now is literally inviting complete strangers into his secret lair in the Alps so he can be recognised...as a Baronet.

That's about the same as wanting people to recognise your 300$ lottery ticket by inviting them to your vault that's filled with massive stacks of heroin...

Besides the just silly plot and reasons, Lazenby does do a decent job and a lot of the more experienced actors also carry the movement, but this movie has just too many strange points. The action is almost non-violent, when Blofeld finds out that Bond is not a Baronet expert but an agent, he has him sent to the machine room. Not a dangerous death room or anything, just a...room that's a bit ugly and dirty. The fights are uncharacteristically bloodless and almost nobody dies, it feels like some sort of baby version of James Bond, and the main plot of the villain is to talk with some sort of God Voice to beautiful girls while they sleep. Because talking to them in their sleep with the God Voice somehow makes them totally subservient to his commands.

Nevermind that it totally feels like a bad sexual fantasy, it's also particularly stupid when any of the girls could just not be sleeping at the time. Also, Bond takes less than 2 minutes to escape his room/cell in the Secret Lair, of course, but how come the teenage girl in the room next to his can do the exact same, with the exact same method? When your super secret lair has security that a 19 year old can bypass, and you punish the secret agent by sending him to the corner, I think the talent of the actors is the least of the concerns to have...

Still, despite the strange sexual fantasy plot, the baby violence, the beginner actors, this is a movie that has its own flair, its originality, it dares to try a real romance with Bond, it goes for a lot of interesting ideas, it introduced a lot of good characters, it's memorable even months after seeing it, and even if it ultimately isn't that good, it still entirely deserves to be seen once.