On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Because we live in the tiresome era of hipsters chasing clout, George Lazenby stinkbomb On Her Majesty's Secret Service has recently become a fashionable favourite among the douchebag crowd. Liking this mess is an instant tell for a pseud, don't even @ me.

Numales will defend this.

The plot involves, boringly, Telly Savalas trying to destabilise British agriculture with a foot-and-mouth-style pathogen disseminated by a squad of brainwashed 60s hairdos. This is such a step back from hijacking spaceships from a volcano I think even with a decent Bond it would have been a letdown, but it gets stupider. George Lay-Z-Boy has to go undercover as a boring nerd, which is up there with casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as an emotionless robot in terms of making the best out of casting, to establish whether or not Savalas is really Blofeld, posing as a count with a suspiciously similar name like he wants to get caught.

What is this stupid fucking doily thing meant to be?

This is dumb for at least two reasons: one is that if Bond is meant to be the same person as last time, Blofeld would immediately recognise him. There's a pre-title gag where Lay-Z-Boy sort of winks to the audience that he's not the "other guy" so I guess maybe he isn't, but if that's the case then why can't Miss Moneypenny and M tell the difference? There's an old fan theory that "James Bond" is just a codename given to every agent who takes on the role, but that's even stupider because that would mean he, Miss Moneypenny, M and Q are all in kayfabe 24/7 like a pack of rancid LARPers.

To paraphrase Scre4m, am I overthinking it, or did the writers underthink it?

The other reason this is dumb is that Blofeld is jeopardising his entire plan for the trivial matter of pursuing a title, which seems to fly, stupidly, in the face of his previous characterisation. The classic Blofeld is interesting only because he's such a mysterious cypher, the literally faceless mastermind known even to his closest followers only as "Number 1". Even the name SPECTRE evokes something ambiguous, amorphous. He didn't even care enough to get the huge scar on his face fixed until now. OHMSS Blofeld, meanwhile, is such a preening douche he'll paint a huge target on himself just for a meaningless honorific. More like Blohard.

Your villain should not look like someone who tells boring stories at work parties and drives a sports car because he's bald.

Worse, this is the one with the ""tragic"" ""love"" story, which makes it all the more regrettable that it's the one where Bond is played by a man with all the acting talent of a rock and all the charisma of a less interesting rock. The girl of his dreams is played by Diana Rigg from Loicenseland TV show The Avengers (not to be confused with Disney's Marvel's borefests), which is like casting the chick from Relic Hunter as Lara Croft, except that would be hot af so not like that at all. Rigg is more likeable than Lay-Z-Boy, but this is not a very considerable achievement, and her character goes from a suicidal trainwreck to Bond With Tits offscreen for no reason at all.

"U WOT M8 I'LL FOCKIN GLASS YA" - our hero's one true love

Even the action scenes are boring and go on way too long, especially the ski chase which features some of the worst back projection I've ever seen, including in Laurel and Hardy flicks. Blohard fucks up constantly, putting Bond in a storage room and forgetting about him, leaving him for dead in an avalanche, getting distracted by his thot at an important moment, dismissing an obvious attack as "nothing" even though it's literally minutes before his win condition would have been achieved, missing an easy shot at an oblivious Bond's back, and dropping a live grenade in his own bobsled. I am literally not making any of those up.

"DURR HERP DERP DURR" - a once feared mastermind

"But Pat", you simper hipsterishly, "OHMSS is Bond for grownups. Simple minds like yours can't comprehend the artistry. I have been to many wine tastings and am enlightened by my own intelligence". While there are two neat transitions in the flick, that is the full extent of its artistic distinction.

Actually I lied, this is the only one.

The story is as silly and contrived as any other Bond, just less fun. In fact it was such a disaster that the next instalment, Diamonds Are Forever, completely ignores it and picks up immediately after You Only Live Twice, with Sean Connery back in the saddle as if OHMSS had just been a bad dream, but not of the Nightmare on Elm Street variety, but of the Freddy's Dead variety instead. (Mildly) interestingly, the Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton Bonds occasionally mentioned Bond's brief marriage, but Lay-Z-Boy was never seen or heard from again.