A Pleasure As Always, Mr. Bond

February 14, 1998

Christmas time is the traditional opening season for adult films. I'm not talking about XXX REAL NAKED NAKED GIRLS type films but movies that have a plot and aren't made for little kids and teenagers. I'm talking about Amistad, Titanic, and As Good As it Gets. All movies you could take your mother to see.

Thank God there's a 007 movie released this year to save me from Hollywood's grab at the Oscars! After all, you need a little brain candy to deal with all those serious, plot driven, well written and beautifully costumed epics. At least I do.

I adore James Bond. I've seen all of the movies at least once and most more than three times. This is another reason why strict feminists and hard-core lesbians don't like me. I enjoy and even revel in the misogyny tendencies of Bond movies.

After all, where else do you get characters with names like Dr. Goodhead, Major Onatop and my personal favorite, Pussy Galore? In the movie Goldfinger when Sean Connery (the best Bond ever) is introduced to one of the Bond Women he smirks that little smirk of his and utters one of the best Bond lines ever -

"Hello, I'll be your pilot this after noon. I'm Pussy Galore."

Bond looks her up and down and says, "I'll bet you are."

My God how I wanted to be him. (It's a terrible thing to admit). I want to be James Bond - but also a woman - all at the same time. I want to shoot people, get really cool gadgets from cranky old Q and have erotically charged small talk with dangerous and beautiful women who will have sex with me and then be gone.

I was talking to a guy at a party the other night and we started talking about Dude Reels. There are Chick Flicks - like The Joy Luck Club - that contain people talking to each other. Then there are Dude Reels - like all the Bonds and any movie with Jean Claude Van Dam - where things blow up and no one talks about their feeling about those things blowing up. Well, Brad and I got on the topic of the best Bonds.

"O.K., if you had to show an alien three Bond movies that explain it all, what would they be?" Brad asked, looking a little concerned. After all he was asking a woman and this was a test of my general understanding of testosterone.

Without hesitation I said, "Dr. No, Goldfinger and Thunderball." He looked pleased and surprised at the same time.

"Yes, exactly." We went on to talk about Westerns and had words over John Wayne's appearance in The Quiet Man but I was in the club anyway - I knew Bond.

In the latest Bond, Pierce Brosnen plays 007 for the second time. He's good. He's cool, suave and has that look that a really good Bond needs. The look says, "I'm winging it here but damn, am I good or what?"

I was watching Siskel and Ebert before I went a saw the movie and one of them - the skinny one- said he didn't like Brosnen because he was too slight of build to be Bond. I don't think that Bond needs to be burly. As a matter of fact, his best traits are that of a cat. He gets himself into horrible situations because he's curious and he thinks he's immortal. And just like a cat, he'd like nothing better that to sit atop the TV, stick his hind leg straight up in the air and lick his tummy for three hours. (I'm not at all sure what that means but I like it, so it's staying. Ignore it if you must.)

Tomorrow Never Dies is good and the new Bond woman is great. She's a Chinese spy that's just as good at getting into butt kicking competitions as Bond. (A note on Leslie's behalf. She vehemently denies that the spy lady is the Bond Woman. Leslie thinks it's Terri Hatch, the one who gets banged by Bond and then dies.)

Anyway, she's got some really cool toys of her own including some sort of contraption for walking down walls and a flaming dragon head. They play very well together and blow lots of things up including a "stealth ship".

The one drawback of this Bond and it really is the only one, is that there is no saucy running commentary by Bond. There's no ridiculous double entendre names for him to play with and very little gratuitous sex. Although right at the beginning of the movie there is a great line about James being a cunning linguist. (Say "cunning linguist" a couple of times and you'll get it. If you don't you need to get a cunning linguist of your own.)

We welcome your comments and suggestions.

Copyright 1998 by Laura Jiménez.