We don’t want to offend the effendi.

The Avengers

26: Honey for the Prince

The last of the season, and the last black-and-white episode, Honey for the Prince isn’t quite as strong as I’d remembered. It’s also a tad problematic in places. That said, Brian Clemens’ teleplay maximises the accompanying quirkiness, the guest cast includes a particularly memorable turn from Ron Moody as Ponsonby Hopkirk, the director of QQF (Quite, Quite Fantastic Incorporated), and there’s an even more memorable Dance of the Six Veils courtesy of Mrs Peel (it would have been seven, but she was “poorly educated”).

Who is also again memorably in early hours post-party form this episode (see previously The Girl from Auntie), only this time with Steed too, who has evidently been getting down with the younger generation, and with a teddy bear and balloon in tow. He even gets a pat on the posterior for his dawn treading.

Indeed, there’s much in the way of carnal considerations in Honey for the Prince, what with a masseuse (Carmen Dene) attending to villain Arkadi (George Pastell, Kleig in The Tomb of the Cybermen) by various methods, ranging from lighting his cigar, to massaging his chest with a well-oiled leg and stroking him with a bear claw glove.

Prince Ali: Ah, Number 33. Charming girl, cost me a bag of salt and four goats. I’ve got lots more out the back.

Steed: Goats?

Prince Ali: Wives. Got to have a lot of them. Matter of status, you see. What was it at last count?

Grand Vizier: 320, your Highness.

Then there’s the harem of Prince Ali of Barabia (Zia Mohyeddin, later of Gangsters), where Steed is impressed by his roster of 320 wives (“The Prince is renowned for his ardour”) until Ali offers the sobering qualifier that this also means he has 320 mothers-in-law (eat that, Terry Medford). When Steed has successfully saved Ali from certain death, the latter announces “Anything I have is yours. My horses, my jewels. My favourite wife”; Emma’s stern “Steed!” calls a halt to any further discussion of the matter. We also learn of the fantasy life persona of “One of the best undercover men in the business”, Ronny Westcott (Jon Laurimore, Count Frederico in The Masque of Mandragora): chief eunuch in a harem.

Steed: Tell me, Mrs Peel, what size do you take in Turkish trousers?

But the main selling point of Honey for the Prince is Emma’s dance, giving what is rightly hailed as a cracking display. In the manner of bedroom farce, this is followed by the lusty Prince’s intention to consummate with his 321^st wife (“Retarded, your majesty. Definitely what you’d call retarded” Steed explains of Emma’s earlier unresponsiveness to questioning; the Avengers HR department subsequently had words with him over his choice of language). Prior to setting eyes on Mrs Peel, Ali seems much more preoccupied with playing cricket (such that it vaguely recalls Denis Quilley's reluctant lothario in What the Butler Saw).

Mrs Peel: Good morning.

Mr Bumble: Good morning, dear lady. Oh, forgive me, I’ve just been attending to my little charges. Buzzing around the hive, so to speak. Bumble. B Bumble at your service.

The episode has its share of eccentric vignettes of course, most typically in the form of Mr Bumble (Ken Parry), seller of honey and outfitted in an appropriately-striped jumper (“Happy bees make bumper honey” he enthuses). Admittedly, there’s something of formula to the character, but Ken Parry’s effusive performance (and Rigg’s responding cheerfulness) make him irrepressible.

Hopkirk: Well, the QQF, the Quite, Quite Fantastic Incorporated, can help you, quite simply, to help you satisfy your most repressed desires. In a nutshell, Mr Reed, we will recreate your fantasies and let you live them.

Hopkirk’s business, “A million dreams made to order”, provides the setting for Arkadi and gay hit man Vincent (Ronald Curram: a comparable performance to Philip Locke’s in the same year’s Thunderball) to practice their various assassinations, Ali being the target of one of them, inevitably. Hopkirk nurses the illusion that it “helps him get something out of his system and no one gets hurt”, until he’s on the receiving end, that is, in a blackly comic scene where he coaxes Vincent to be more forcefully murderous (“Point it at me!”)

Hopkirk: Got it, you’re a secret agent. Yes indeed, ideal for you. Licensed to kill, pitting your wits against a diabolical mastermind. Make a change from your everyday humdrum existence, wouldn’t it?

Steed: Hah ha ha, yes. Certainly make a change.

Hopkirk’s most ambitious fantasy recreation was the sinking of Titanic (“Several of my staff had to be resuscitated afterwards”) and his most delightfully meta is Fantasy Number Four – “Escape of Arkadi from Pursuing Agents” – since Steed discovers it just as Arkadi has taken flight. Also self-reflexive is Hopkirk’s suggested fantasy for our hero, right down to another reference for diabolical masterminds.

Steed: I’m most terribly sorry, colonel. It’s another body entirely.

Earlier, there’s an amusing scene between Steed and the unseen Colonel Westcott, in which he calls to ask for a body to be removed from his apartment, only to learn it already has been; this is a different corpse, that of Bernie (Peter Diamond, stuntman extraordinaire), eliciting Steed’s profuse apologies.

The laugh-off has the appearance of a complete flight of fantasy (a magic carpet ride), until it’s revealed that Steed and Emma are on the back of van (“How do you stop it?”: “That’s a very good question”, making you wonder who’s driving).

Honey for the Prince is less than sensitive in its trading on Middle Eastern stereotypes; it’s said the Hyucks studied the episode when researching offensive ethnic tropes for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. What just about saves it, however, is its prevailing self-awareness and undercutting of assumptions (a magic lamp yields a machine gun killer, the exotic prince, who offers Steed the left eye of a mountain rat – “A very rare delicacy” – is revealed as an anglophile – well, it is The Avengers – female objectification, the value of a wife counted in goats, is taken to ridiculous, even banal extremes; a duty roster is necessary for the week) via the same general irreverence exhibited by the rest of the series at this point. Nevertheless, it occupies similar ground to How to Succeed… at Murder; where many episodes of the season transcend their era, the prevailing sensibility means this one is very much confined by it.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

The guy practically lives in a Clue board.

Knives Out (2019)
(SPOILERS) “If Agatha Christie were writing today, she’d have a character who’s an Internet troll.” There’s a slew of ifs and buts in that assertion, but it tells you a lot about where Rian Johnson is coming from with Knives Out. As in, Christie might – I mean, who can really say? – but it’s fair to suggest she wouldn’t be angling her material the way Johnson does, who for all his pronouncement that “This isn’t a message movie” is very clearly making one. He probably warrants a hesitant pass on that statement, though, to the extent that Knives Out’s commentary doesn’t ultimately overpower the whodunnit side of the plot. On the other hand, when Daniel Craig’s eccentrically accented sleuth Benoit Blanc is asked “You’re not much of a detective, are you?” the only fair response is vigorous agreement.

It's their place, Mac. They have a right to make of it what they can. Besides, you can't eat scenery!

Local Hero (1983)
(SPOILERS) With the space of thirty-five years, Bill Forsyth’s gentle eco-parable feels more seductive than ever. Whimsical is a word often applied to Local Hero, but one shouldn’t mistake that description for its being soft in the head, excessively sentimental or nostalgic. Tonally, in terms of painting a Scottish idyll where the locals are no slouches in the face of more cultured foreigners, the film hearkens to both Powell and Pressburger (I Know Where I’m Going!) and Ealing (Whisky Galore!), but it is very much its own beast.

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993)
(SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

Of course, one m…

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

I'm reliable, I'm a very good listener, and I'm extremely funny.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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