Moonraker (1979)

It's almost two months to the day since we last watched a Bond movie. The reason? The next one on our list was Moonraker, which I've just had the misfortune of sitting through again. 

Why is Moonraker so bad? Let me count the ways:

1. Jaws comes back. Not just as a deadly foe, no, as 'comic' relief. He becomes a pantomime villain (a bad one) and then eventually, through reasons too vague to mention, turns to the good side and helps James Bond to escape. He's the worst comic relief since Sheriff J.W. Pepper was brought back for a second movie.
   
2. Jaws gets a girlfriend. With blonde pig tails. And when they embrace, cheesy romantic music plays. 
3. James Bond goes into space. While in space, he is dressed in a yellow tracksuit and Converse trainers.
4. I'll say it again: James Bond. Goes. Into. Space. Seriously. Just because Star Wars was doing the same thing around that time, Bond jumped on the bandwagon, and the result is a dated display of inconceivable laser fights between man in space suits, and between space shuttles.
5. Bond not only has a gondola that converts into a hovercraft for dry land, he must drive it through a piaza full of 'comedy' drunks and (oh Christ) a double-taking pigeon. It is at this point that Moonraker (and perhaps the entire Bond franchise!) jumped the shark. 
6. Bond spends the first hour + of the film looking for a stolen shuttle... to find that Drax, the lame villain, stole his own shuttle because... one of his other shuttles was broken and he wanted the other back. 
7. Dr Holly Goodhead has a bad name and no personality. 
8. Hugo Drax just has no personality. 
9. General Gogol cameos in the movie for... what reason exactly? A cheap, sexist gag?
10. The sexism on display from 007 is quite breath-taking, even for him, bedding 3 different women and being completely astounded that Holly Goodhead is a female scientist (just wait until Bond meets Dr. Christmas Jones...)
11. Drax attempts to kill Bond in more ludicrous ways than ever before - via snake attack; Jaws' attack on a moving ski lift; at a pheasant shoot (Bond calmly shoots his would-be assassin out of a tree in front of Drax and neither bats an eyelid); through an elaborate funeral-gondola, with a coffin-bound killer, who is killed by Bond in the blink of an eye; and my favourite: by spinning Bond really, really fast.
12. Drax's evil plan involves releasing a gas that is only poisonous to humans, and not plants or animals. How the hell does that work? Humans *are* animals.
    
13. The revolving space station, owned by Drax, includes an 'Emergency Stop' button. Not only that, but when this button is pressed again, it miraculously becomes an 'Emergency Go' button as everything returns to normal!
    
14. Did I mention the double-taking pigeon?
    

So what is there to like about Moonraker? It's a brief list:

1. Shirley Bassey's opening song.
2. Shirley Bassey's closing song.
3. Q's line: 'I think he's attempting re-entry, sir.'