Spy Hard (1996)

A James Bond parody released in 1996, Spy Hard arrives with its credentials in order: Leslie Nielsen in the lead, a title song by "Weird Al" Yankovic, and a screenplay by the men who would go on to inflict Date Movie upon an unsuspecting public. The plot concerns General Rancor, a villain with no arms who attaches robotic limbs, and Agent WD-40, who must stop him. This is the entire architecture. The film runs seventy-seven minutes before credits, and the strain of filling even that span is visible in every frame.

On the matter of social consciousness, the ledger is nearly blank, and the few entries are unflattering. The cast is white to a degree that suggests a country club membership list, with Elya Baskin's Russian agent the lone exception. Nicollette Sheridan's Agent 3.14 is nominally capable, but the title sequence stages silhouetted women gyrating with firearms in direct homage to the Bond openings, which is to say the objectification is the joke and also the product. The New York Times noted with some relish that the sequence features obese cartoon silhouettes swimming across the screen, which places the film's posture on body image somewhere south of indifference. There is no racial commentary, no environmental concern, no class critique, and no neurodivergent presence. The villain wants world domination because villains want world domination. Andy Griffith was cast because Disney wanted a television star, a decision the director has spent decades lamenting.

What remains is a machine for jokes that fires in all directions and connects rarely. There is no sermon here, no instruction, no lesson about how we ought to live. The film has no interest in improving anyone. It wants only to land gags, and by most accounts it does not land enough of them.