The title of this documentary about real-world males who’re named James Bond echoes a famous, winking moment in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service when a younger girl runs away after being rescued as an alternative of staying to smooch together with her saviour; George Lazenby as Bond, taking up the function from a briefly retired Sean Connery, wryly says: “This by no means occurred to the opposite fellow.” The reference is apt as a result of the tales recounted listed here are all about that glamour hole between the heroic exploits of fictional spy 007 and the common guys who share his identify.
Most of the James Bonds met right here clearly detest it when, for the zillionth time, strangers comment that they don’t seem like Connery, Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig. Some dad and mom named them James Bond earlier than Dr No got here out in 1962, or if it was out already, they didn’t suppose the franchise would turn into that massive a deal. In South Bend, Indiana, James Bond Jr first obtained into hassle as a teen with the police when he merely instructed them his identify and the cop thought he was taking the piss, as a result of this Bond occurred to be black. Years later he was accused of homicide, and through the manhunt the identify was within the information lots, inflicting issues for an additional James Bond who lived in the identical city. We meet an ex-James Bond who modified his final identify, and a kooky Swedish superfan who modified his identify to James Bond and runs a museum that includes his assortment of adorably shonky Bond memorabilia.
The film-makers principally attempt for a whimsical, humorous tone, with quick-cut enhancing and dramatic recreations of moments within the lifetime of the ornithologist whose identify was borrowed by creator Ian Fleming. The jocularity, nonetheless, is fairly punctured by a protracted story a couple of girl who was horribly abused by her ex-husband, who stored monitoring her down irrespective of the place she moved; she determined to call her son James Bond with a purpose to thwart his efforts to search out them as a result of web searches would throw up so many references to the identify. The shift in tone is a bit awkwardly dealt with; and the movie is greater than slightly repetitious, particularly because it twice reveals the black-and-white archive clip of Fleming explaining how he selected the identify James Bond.
