You Only Live Twice (1967)
I'd forgotten how poor this Connery outing actually was. The plot is fine but it's the smaller plot points that totally ruin it. You can really see why the makers of Austin Powers ripped it to shreds.
Examples - Well where to start? Why does Bond spend twenty minutes of the film Ninja training and marrying a Japanese girl? Simply so he can walk up a jetty with her it would seem. Not really sure you have to get married for that. Then there's Bond 'turning Japanese'. The moment he enters Blofeld's volcano base the prosthetics are nowhere to be seen. SPECTRE's number 11, as played by Karin Dor, captures Bond and takes him to her base, ties him to a chair, makes out with him then concocts an elaborate plan to escape with him in a small plane before she leaps out with a parachute leaving Bond in the plane to crash, except he doesn't obviously. Why the hell not just shoot him when he's stuck in her chair? Meanwhile Donald Pleasence portraying Blofeld is simply comical. As Jimmy Cricket would say 'And there's more', in fact much more, but i'm bored typing it.
It's not all rubbish writing from Roald Dahl though.
There are one or two fun scenes, in particular an aerial dogfight featuring Bond piloting 'Little Nellie' an armed gyrocopter against four SPECTRE helicopters - it's exhilarating stuff as is the Ninja assault on the volcano base but by then it's all a little too late.
No wonder Sean Connery decided to leave the role of 007 midway through filming. Thankfully as promised James Bond returned in the far superior On Her Majesty's Secret Service two years later.
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