Now my geography isn't great, but I am not sure you can actually fly from the Yukon to the British coast in fifteen minutes! That's how this outing for Roger Moore begins, and it's symptomatic of the rather weak storyline and sloppy production that seems intent on getting "James Bond" to capitalise on "Star Wars" (1977) fever. Anyway, a space shuttle is stolen and "007" is sent to visit gazillionaire industrialist "Drax" (Michael Londsale) who lives in a genuinely imported French chateau in California. A dizzying experience introduces him to "Dr. Goodhead" (Lois Chiles) and pretty soon the pair, after a bit of a sticky start, are trying to find out what happened to the missing spaceship and to thwart an ingenious plan to replace the population of the planet with an Aryan-style perfect race. Everyone here just looks tired. Lonsdale tries hard to inject some sort of menace but the rest of it lumbers along in an episodic fashion with a couple of set-piece escapades that are frequently let down by poor visual effects (the dogs eating the steaks, or the gondola chase - where they have clearly just speeded up film...). John Barry and Hal David delivered another number for Shirley Bassey and, indeed, the score provides quite a bit of the humour with nods to "Close Encounters" (1977) and the "Magnificent Seven" (1960) but the rest of this is really mediocre. Usually there are a few scenarios in a "Bond" film where he implausibly survives almost certain death, but here he seems to constantly lurch from the frying pan to the frying pan time and time again - with the newly loved-up "Jaws" (Richard Kiel) really failing to inject much menace as we head into outer space for our colourful, but rather silly, denouement. The franchise is running out of steam, and needs a serious reboot.
