George Lazenby

  • The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

    The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (TubiTV Streaming, September 2020) Films like The Kentucky Fried Movie are best appreciated as portents of better things to come. The number and later pedigree of people involved in its production is incredible—sophomore feature film from John Landis, first movie script by the legendary Zucker-Abrams-Zucker trio, appearances by George Lazenby, Henry Gibson and Donald Sutherland… all in semi-related comedy sketches relying on a lot of sudden crudity, silliness and bare breasts. The problem, though, is that if The Kentucky Fried Movie is amusing, it’s not quite as frequently funny—there’s a sense that it’s all juvenile and not quite ready for prime time, even as it does its best to get laughs. What may be funnier now than it was upon release is the deluge of references to a variety of 1970s pop-culture, politics and sports: either watch the film with Wikipedia in hand, or enjoy the even stranger sense of jokes flying over your heads. The Kentucky Fried Movie would have many inheritors—it’s an early prototype of a style of comedy that would become Airplane! and Top Secret! and The Naked Gun, but it’s not quite cooked yet. (It’s still funnier than any of the spoof movies of the 2000s, though.)

  • Everything or Nothing (2012)

    Everything or Nothing (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2013) As an officially-sanctioned history of the first fifty years of the James Bond film franchise, Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 is satisfying: Through a mixture of talking heads, narration, archival footage and clips from the movies themselves, the film cobbles together a highlight reel of the franchise’s distinct eras, behind-the-scenes upheavals, cultural impact and passing whims.  Its single best asset is in featuring all Bonds (except for Sean Connery, for reasons that quickly become obvious) reflecting upon their tenure as Bond and the reasons behind their exit from the franchise.  George Lazenby rebelling from The Establishment? Pierce Brosnan cackling over kite-surfing a tsunami?  Entertaining stuff.  But this overview of the franchise’s history only skims the surface, and no amount of good words from Bill Clinton himself can fully explore the infighting between the Broccoli family and legal challengers to the Bond franchise, or the various issues faced by the filmmakers in shooting Bond movies.  It’s also curiously quick to dispense with entire eras of the Bond franchise, some movies barely earning a mention.  (It’s also inevitably flawed in having been released alongside Skyfall, a Bond film that will stand on its own as worthy of further discussion in later retrospectives.)  The film isn’t above a bit of mythmaking (I’m not sure that the Fleming novels were as innovative as the narration makes them out to be), and for its entire often-surprising candor, it remains an authorized documentary that doesn’t dare criticize the official version of events.  While an entertaining and superbly-edited film, Everything or Nothing is most likely to make viewers do two things, neither of which are entirely bad: First up, make everyone see the Bond films over again.  Second: have them look for a more detailed and more objective history of the franchise, if only to more fully explore elements barely mentioned within the confines of a 90-minutes documentary.