Jason Friedberg

(Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) I remember paying good money to watch Spy Hard in theatres during its opening week, and getting nothing good out of the ordeal. For a Babylon 5 fan, the film’s sole highlight was spotting super-cute Shari Shattuck in a very short role—otherwise hearing Weird Al Yankovic sing the theme song over the opening credits. Still, it was a disappointment even then: By the 1990s, Leslie Nielsen’s spoof comedies were fast declining even if we viewers had no idea how terrible the genre would become by the late 2000s. Fittingly enough, Spy Hard was the first film co-written by the harbingers of the spoof apocalypse Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer—and as unimpressive a job they did here, they would do much, much worse over the following decade and a half. But Spy Hard is terrible enough by itself, with Nielsen sleepwalking through a weak Bond parody that doesn’t have much pep. (As many have noted, the opening song is funnier than the rest of the film, exploding head excepted.)  If Spy Hard has one overall saving grace, it’s that it’s dull, not actively unfunny like much of the later Friedberg-Seltzer catalogue. Gags still try to build a comedy with a distinct identity (rather than just as assemblage of re-created scenes), and there are occasional smirks. One of them would be Marcia Gay Harden in a sexpot take on Miss Monneypenny—something she reportedly regrets now, but actually feels funnier than in 1996 considering the oh-so-serious turn her screen persona later took. But the rest of the film? There isn’t much there even if you’re being generous. In historical context, Spy Hard is most remarkable as another entry in the downward trajectory of spoof comedies from their 1980s heyday to their 2010 nadir (and subsequent disappearance). That’s not something to be proud of.