dancing, and it goes on for a long time. A very long time. A very very long time. Once again, the Republispouse turned to me while we were watching this and said “Is the movie running short again?” I checked the box: running time is an hour and forty-five minutes. Nope, not running long. Weird.
Helm reveals to her that her dad is still alive, they make out some more, then there’s a very long car chase that includes a weird continuity error: They start off in Anne’s car, a cute little girly 2-seater convertible, and then suddenly they’re in Helm’s car, with all his spy gadgets. There’s no explanation given for this, it just happens. The chase goes on easily as long as the dance sequence did, and it’s mostly music-free. Ultimately, the police chasing Helm are distracted by girls in bikinis (it is Cannes, after all), and the Americans get away.
At Helm’s behest, Ann borrows a boat from her longsuffering boyfriend, Billy, and the two of them head off to the island to rescue her father. As was considered appropriate female attire for rescues in those days, Ann is wearing basically a long T-shirt, and that’s it. Helm breaks out his delayed firing pistol (Pull the trigger, count to eight, and it shoots) and a Freeze Gun he stole from Coco on the hovercraft. He freezes a couple guards while sneaking in under cover of darkness, but then runs out of…uhm…juice? Freon? Whatever, and reverts to his delay gun. All the guards are taken down with more-or-less comedy. Meanwhile, Ann goes bounding around the dungeon, bluffing her way past the guards by being cute. “Mr. Wall sent me down to talk to Solaris, and I’m lost. Can you help me?”
When Helm finds Solaris, he’s been tortured badly and isn’t really terribly mobile, so Helm tries to kill the guy just as Anne busts in and stops him. Then they all get captured by Wall. Wall quickly finds out that Ann is Solaris’ daughter, and decides to torture her to get the information out of her old man rather than torturing the dad himself. Coco lets Anne put on some pants, so you know an action sequence is coming up. Helm tries to play it off like he’s still on their side, but eventually he says “You want to know who I am?” picks up a glass of booze and faces away from the camera. “Matt Helm!” they realize. (Love that gag!). He tries to buy his own life by giving false information to Mac, so they let him call. He tells them that the assignment is over, the good guys won, and everyone will be fine. There were coded bits of info in there to let Mac know that all was not on the level, however. (“Matt Helm never drank a glass of bourbon in his life!”) and he uses the info to identify the mole. Alas, the Mole gets off one last message, and Helm is thrown in to a shake-em-up machine that’s supposed to energize the Inobtanium-40. Ironhead puts him in there with a jellybean that’s never explained, but evidently is really significant.
Meanwhile, Wall shoots at Ann with a spear gun until her daddy relents. They take Ann away so the men folk can plot world domination, and once again she manages to bluff her way past what has to be the absolute worst crew of security guards in the universe by simply being cute. “My uncle designed the death ray control mechanism” one of them brags, “I can tell you all about it! This is the doubletalk reckonable hoobijoob ossilator which brings about inverse thingamabobs” “Cute!” Ann emphatically agrees. After describing in detail how impervious to damage it is, she destroys it with a bobby pin, then gets Helm out of the milkshake mixer.
Helm and Ironhead fight for quite a while, both directly, and over the never-explained red jellybean. Then Ann turns on an electromagnetic crane and hauls Ironhead in to the air. Helm throws the jellybean at him, and the guy explodes. Again, I can’t help but think that a scene was missing wherein they explain the surprisingly high destructive potential of jellybeans. Anyway…things go south quickly, and Wall kills his girlfriend not for any particular reason aside from *not* killing her would be a dangling plot thread. He futzes with the controls, then escapes to his hovercraft.
Helm, Ann and her daddy meet up in the
Frankly, that whole sequence in the ICE base at the start of the movie just doesn't work or fit, you know? It's like it came out of a completely different movie.
The Artist Formerly Known As Republibot 3.0