STUFF YOU GOTTA WATCH - You Only Live Twice

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

(1967)
With Sean Connery, Donald Pleasence, Mie Hama, Akiko Wakabayashi, Tetsuro Tamba, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
Reviewed by JL and JB

A volcano is not a home without love YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE is the weakest James Bond film of the 1960s, although it has its strengths. Sean Connery would return to the role of Bond in 1971 and 1983, but this was his final consecutive appearance in the role and his weariness is telling. He's still the best Bond even when delivering a phoned-in performance, but the film might have been improved a bit had he shown some of the energy and élan of earlier outings. There was little he could do, however, to remedy the tedium and ridiculousness of the film's second half, during which matte paintings of volcanoes blow up and the mysterious Blofeld is revealed to be the vertically challenged Donald Pleasence. It's all the more disappointing given the promise of the first half of the film, which contains some decent action sequences, hairbreadth escapes, an entertaining mini-tour of Japan, and a very clever scheme in which Bond fakes his own death. The screenplay for YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE was written by Roald Dahl (CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH), one of two Ian Fleming books he would adapt for the screen (the other being CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG). ½ - JL

In THUNDERBALL, all the fun "Bondian" elements surrounding the character of 007 threatened to overwhelm the character himself. In YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, that stuff takes over completely and Bond never has a chance. Connery seems to know it, as he gives a mostly listless performance. The writers had little to work with this time, since Ian Fleming's original novel is one of his weakest, so they punted Fleming's story and revisited the plot of DR. NO with a "Biggest Bond of All!" attitude. But despite its bigness, it is also boring for long stretches. Blofeld's volcano fortress is a classic set, but the film needed a huge presence like Orson Welles or Marlon Brando to inhabit it, not little Donnie Pleasance, who projects about as much evil menace as the cat in his lap. His portrayal of Blofeld, Bond's arch enemy, has also been so magnificently skewered by Mike Myers in the AUSTIN POWERS films that it is now impossible to take Pleasance seriously at all. Add some bad dubbing, the idea that a little makeup could pass Bond off as a Japanese man, a comparitively lackluster theme song and some by-the-numbers action sequences, and you have not the worst Bond film ever but certainly one of the dullest. ½ - JB

ADD ANOTHER QUOTE AND MAKE IT A GALLON

"Goodbye, Mr. Bond"

HOW TO TALK LIKE A BOND VILLAIN

"I shall look forward personally to exterminating you, Mr. Bond."