Spy Hard Details

The blockbuster action thriller genre is ripe for sending up, but this lazy effort has to go down as a miss despite the presence of spoofmeister Leslie Nielsen. The basic story is firmly rooted in James Bond — Nielsen is superagent Dick Steele battling supervillain Andy Griffith — but to ensure all the bases are covered director Rick Friedberg tosses in largely irrelevant send-ups of Speed, Pulp Fiction and In the Line of Duty. The cast — which includes Charles Durning and Nicollette Sheridan, plus cameos from Robert Culp and Fabio — tries hard but is defeated by the determinedly juvenile script. Incidentally, the Bond-style soundtrack is by Bill Conti, who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated title track of For Your Eyes Only.

This scrapes the bottom of a genre that is now beyond satirizing and no longer funny in itself; a ragbag of feeble jokes ineffectually aimed at the Bond films, it doesn't even attempt to hit its target.