The Basic Plot in Five Words or Less: It's Roger Moore!  He's Bond!

My Basic Ramblings: This is the first Roger-Moore-as-James-Bond movie I've seen, and I have to say that I really don't like him.  He's got this weird wart/pimple/mole thing on his face that's distracting, he bitch-slaps women, he throws little kids off boats.  Sean (or Pierce, for that matter) would never have done anything like that. (I can't speak for George or Timothy.)

Anyway, let's put that unpleasantness aside for some new unpleasantness. Mary Goodnight is, in theory, an agent with Her Majesty's Secret Service. She's not on Bond's level; no license to kill or anything, but just being an agent would involve some level of intelligence, strength, and courage. Do we get that here? No, we get a dippy blonde in a bikini who is too stupid to realize that if you're going to open a car trunk to put a homing device in it, you're going to get caught, so put the frickin' thing under the car, who backs up into a control panel and can't turn it off, and oh my God, the midget's throwing wine bottles at James, rather than try and fight back, I'll just sit here in the corner and scream. It's a sad, sad state. (The two karate nieces were about a thousand times cooler than Goodnight.  At least a thousand. And they only got one scene.)

As for villians, we get Scaramanga, the thrice-nippled man for whom this film is named. What is it with the Bond series and gold?  We get Goldfinger, The Man with the Golden Gun, and GoldenEye.  What's next? Goldilocks? Wouldn't a gold bullet be too soft to use effectively?  Wouldn't a gun that's made of a cigarette lighter, a cigarette case and a pen not be as effective as say, a gun that's made of a gun? Eventually, someone will borrow the pen and not return it, and Scaramanga's screwed.

Scaramanga's evil little henchman is Nick Nack (paddy-whack, give the dog a bone), played by the Tattoo guy from Fantasy Island, Herve Villechaze/Villechase/however it's spelled. He's creepy. But, I suppose it's his job to be creepy, he's a Bond villian's henchman.

There're car chases and car flips and explosions and sex. No extra-wacky fancy gadgets from Q, though we do get the Queen Elizabeth doubling as super-secret British spy headquarters (though wouldn't someone have seen them bring all the stuff in that they needed, like food and working plumbing and all that?) and Scaramanga's car with the factory-standard airplane attachment. (I asked Chris to please, please, please buy me one.  He wouldn't.  Oh well.)

Scaramanga, of course, explains his evil plan (involving selling technology that'll end the energy crisis to the highest bidder) to Bond before putting him in a death trap he couldn't possibly escape, absosmurfly impossible, there's no way Bond could escape this time, no no no no no, he's as good as dead, until Bond escapes and kills the bad guy and gets the girl and has a daring watery escape.

So basically it's just like every other Bond movie except Moore's a loser and I wanted to strangle Goodnight and that stupid Louisiana cop he hooked up with.

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