Finally they’re catching on to the age of Miss Moneypenny and how it makes for uncomfortable viewing when James Bond flirts with her – in this episode they crack a joke about it, so it’s clearly a well understood issue by now.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this movie, aside from its ridiculously rude name, is how one of the main female characters (herself called Octopussy – the character who this movie was named after) is played by Maud Adams who was also one of the main women in The Man With The Golden Gun (1974). She’s just an average Bond girl so how she managed the lead gig in two separate Bond movies within the Roger Moore era I have no idea – it isn’t even due to anything in the storyline, since her character was killed off in The Man With The Golden Gun. I can only assume she’s either born into a very influential family, or has been doing all kinds of naughty favours for the relevant decisionmakers.
The last half hour of Octopussy is not a bad one. Bond stops an atomic bomb going off, which was organised by a rogue Russian general; and Octopussy (now on Bond’s side), with the help of her gang of circus women, raids the fortress of the guy who double-crossed her but she gets captures so James Bond rescues her. Still, having said that, it’s still probably one of the weaker Bond movies from the Roger Moore era. Either on a par with the last one (For Your Eyes Only, 1981) or slightly better but not by much. I’m going to rate it OK due to its strong back end. Still, Moore delivers a strong performance from his side as usual in this movie which is his penultimate outing as James Bond – the next one, A View To A Kill (1985) will be Roger Moore’s final outing as James Bond, and after that we enter the short but sweet Timothy Dalton era.
Note also, just a few months after the release of Octopussy, Sean Connery’s one-off comeback as Bond hit the big screen – Never Say Never Again (1983) – which was produced independently of Eon Productions who produced pretty much all the other Bond movies (except for Casino Royale, 1967, which was an unwatchably unfunny satire rather than the usual Bond genre).