Nostalgiasploitation

Rating: 5/10 (15 December 2015)

This is not Mary Poppins' secret spell, or a rare skin condition. It's a graceless blending of words describing the dominant trend in blockbuster filmmaking these days, and its effect is either a gleeful geek-out or 360 degree eye-rolling and fatigue.
In this ocean of remakes and reboots we find ourselves adrift in, it was inevitable that Ian Fleming's 007 would be reborn for the 21st century. Reforged, remade, rebooted, not just continued, even though he had never really left, his longest hiatus being before the seminal Goldeneye. Casino Royale offered a return to basics after the lapses of the late Brosnan outings and the madness of Roger Moore's heyday. Timothy Dalton bond but with slightly less dour charm than that of Timothy Dalton, and even this last proposition is one you can debate at this stage.
So after rebooting Bond with Casino, Bourning him with Quantum of Solace, and throwing Oscar-pedigree crews at him for Skyfall, what can SPECTRE do to charm us but plunder the back-catalog? The clue was in the title, which speaks volumes to fans of Connery-era Bond, but like many nostalgiaspoitation flicks of late, this Bond outing fails to be the many things it wants to be to many audiences. Is it a culmination of the overall narrative that began with Casino Royale? Is it a convoluted and loose remake of the Blofeld-Bond duel films of the late 60s? Or is it an attempt to create a Bond expanded universe that would have a rigid chronology, turning these into cumbersome interlinked episodes rather than discreet treats you could enjoy on their own merits? Or are we just mining the repertoire for nostalgia value?
SPECTRE wants to be all of these things, stumbling more often than not, which is unfortunate because it is at its best when charting its own path, as shown by an ingenious pre-credits sequence. From the opening song, tune included, things dip dramatically, and never quite recover. Nods to the past tend to miss the point, as does a mean but pointless train fight, and a revelation about the key villain which is about as surprising as the Khan reveal from Star Trek Into Darkness. Christoph Waltz does what he can and rises above the material, but there is only so much even he can do. Otherwise Daniel Craig is pretty charmless - veering on the wrong side of rapey at one point - and the Bond girls barely register. Director Sam Mendes managed to get a lot right on his previous outing, but this is probably not one of the Bonds you'll care to revisit anytime soon.
In an age of remakes and reboots - and with the returns of Star Wars and Alien just around the corner - it will suffice to sum this up as « inoffensively » bad. There is skill on display, and the odd idea or two, but we, the audience, deserve better.