If there is an enduring mystery, it is why so many people consider this movie one of the best, if not the best, in the James Bond series. I first watched it shortly after re-watching some of the early Bond flicks like "Goldfinger" and "From Russia with Love," both of which hold up well today, even after having been imitated and satirized countless times. The inferiority of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was evident to me in just the first few minutes, which feature a repetitive and almost incoherent sequence of events where Bond goes about his business and keeps getting suddenly attacked by henchmen hiding behind the curtains.
What immediately struck me was the stunningly bad acting from Sean Connery's replacement George Lazenby, as he woodenly delivered the standard one-liners. I know I'm not the only one who has had this reaction. But I keep hearing people say things like, "Well, Lazenby was bad, but not as bad as Timothy Dalton." That response leaves me bewildered. Dalton may not have been right for the Bond role, but he's a classically trained actor who had an impressive résumé long before being cast as James Bond. Lazenby wasn't an actor at all; he was a fan who somehow won himself the role, perhaps because of his looks. It's true that people with no prior acting experience have been known to give fine performances. Playing an action hero doesn't require great thespian ability, anyway: Arnold Schwarzenegger has demonstrated that again and again. But Lazenby lacks even a basic screen presence. He walks with the grace of an elephant (actually, that statement is highly unfair to elephants), and he sucks energy away from the screen. His one redeeming quality is that he's a fine athlete. He should have been the stunt double.
Unfortunately, this film calls for more acting chops than the usual Bond flick, because it deals with Bond falling in love. It features scenes of high drama, but Lazenby blows them all because he is unable to show the needed level of complex, understated emotion. If Lazenby was to appear in any Bond film, I would think this one would be the least appropriate candidate.
The movie deals with Bond's romance by having one of those video sequences where we see the two chatting and enjoying themselves together in various casual locations, but we don't hear anything they're saying. The message is that they're falling for each other, even if we don't have a clue why or how. This type of sequence is a sure sign of amateur direction. We need to experience the relationship along with the characters. That's one of the purposes of movies.
The sequence occurs early in the film, then the girl promptly disappears until much later. It's just as well, since there's no chemistry between the characters, not even for a moment. The center of the movie involves Bond disguising himself as a Scotsman and traveling to an institute where people are receiving weird hypnotic suggestions about loving the flesh of chickens. I'm not sure if the humor here is intentional or not. But there's no excuse for scenes like this, considering that the earlier Connery films managed to avoid camp.
What do people see in this film? Presumably that it has good action sequences. There's a nice chase scene through the snow, but it doesn't compare to the best parts of "Goldfinger," and it comes after two hours by which time I was already getting fidgety. Telly Savalas is well-cast as the villain, but he makes too few appearances, and there isn't much about his mad personality or snide dialogues with Bond. He's all business. The movie contains no scenes remotely as exciting as the fight with Odd Job, or the dialogues between Bond and Goldfinger. Or that fantastically filmed scene in "From Russia With Love" where the agent is following Bond and we see his face appearing in each of the train windows successively. (Now that is good direction.)
Sometimes I had the feeling that the people involved in the film knew it was terrible and were trying to sabotage it. I've seen only a handful of Bond films, but I'm guessing that this is the only one that shows 007 looking into a Playboy magazine. (What is the world coming to?!) I suspect it's also the only one to make a joke at the expense of Bond's manhood, when the "Scottish" Bond drops his kilt in front of a woman and she immediately bursts into hysterical laughter--supposedly because she is surprised to find out that the "rumor" about Scotsmen and kilts is true. As Dr. Evil would say, riiiiight. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" is a disgrace to the series and doesn't deserve any more respect.
What immediately struck me was the stunningly bad acting from Sean Connery's replacement George Lazenby, as he woodenly delivered the standard one-liners. I know I'm not the only one who has had this reaction. But I keep hearing people say things like, "Well, Lazenby was bad, but not as bad as Timothy Dalton." That response leaves me bewildered. Dalton may not have been right for the Bond role, but he's a classically trained actor who had an impressive résumé long before being cast as James Bond. Lazenby wasn't an actor at all; he was a fan who somehow won himself the role, perhaps because of his looks. It's true that people with no prior acting experience have been known to give fine performances. Playing an action hero doesn't require great thespian ability, anyway: Arnold Schwarzenegger has demonstrated that again and again. But Lazenby lacks even a basic screen presence. He walks with the grace of an elephant (actually, that statement is highly unfair to elephants), and he sucks energy away from the screen. His one redeeming quality is that he's a fine athlete. He should have been the stunt double.
Unfortunately, this film calls for more acting chops than the usual Bond flick, because it deals with Bond falling in love. It features scenes of high drama, but Lazenby blows them all because he is unable to show the needed level of complex, understated emotion. If Lazenby was to appear in any Bond film, I would think this one would be the least appropriate candidate.
The movie deals with Bond's romance by having one of those video sequences where we see the two chatting and enjoying themselves together in various casual locations, but we don't hear anything they're saying. The message is that they're falling for each other, even if we don't have a clue why or how. This type of sequence is a sure sign of amateur direction. We need to experience the relationship along with the characters. That's one of the purposes of movies.
The sequence occurs early in the film, then the girl promptly disappears until much later. It's just as well, since there's no chemistry between the characters, not even for a moment. The center of the movie involves Bond disguising himself as a Scotsman and traveling to an institute where people are receiving weird hypnotic suggestions about loving the flesh of chickens. I'm not sure if the humor here is intentional or not. But there's no excuse for scenes like this, considering that the earlier Connery films managed to avoid camp.
What do people see in this film? Presumably that it has good action sequences. There's a nice chase scene through the snow, but it doesn't compare to the best parts of "Goldfinger," and it comes after two hours by which time I was already getting fidgety. Telly Savalas is well-cast as the villain, but he makes too few appearances, and there isn't much about his mad personality or snide dialogues with Bond. He's all business. The movie contains no scenes remotely as exciting as the fight with Odd Job, or the dialogues between Bond and Goldfinger. Or that fantastically filmed scene in "From Russia With Love" where the agent is following Bond and we see his face appearing in each of the train windows successively. (Now that is good direction.)
Sometimes I had the feeling that the people involved in the film knew it was terrible and were trying to sabotage it. I've seen only a handful of Bond films, but I'm guessing that this is the only one that shows 007 looking into a Playboy magazine. (What is the world coming to?!) I suspect it's also the only one to make a joke at the expense of Bond's manhood, when the "Scottish" Bond drops his kilt in front of a woman and she immediately bursts into hysterical laughter--supposedly because she is surprised to find out that the "rumor" about Scotsmen and kilts is true. As Dr. Evil would say, riiiiight. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" is a disgrace to the series and doesn't deserve any more respect.