From Roger Moore with Love

I stumbed upon this documentary film about the life of Roger Moore, and wasn't really expecting to stick with it for the entirity, but it hooked me in.

I did think the idea of Steve Coogan voicing Moore from 'beyond the grave' might end up sounding a bit ghoulish, but it managed to stay on the right side of the line.

Moore is presented as being a bit of a scamp, a bit of a lad, who loved well and never took himself too seriously. If this were a TV drama he might have presented in a darker light, but I appreciated that this opted to keep the skeletons in the closet.

With some worthy talking heads filling the silences, this was better than I thought it would be.

I saw Roger Moore aged 16 on my first day working at Pinewood Studios in 1977 and he looked exactly as you would expect. Just like James Bond or any other part he played. This is a film made by those who loved and liked him but it's none the worse for that. Steve Coogan does a great job voicing him in a straight forward telling of his life. He seemed to enjoy his life and career and not take himself too seriously. All his kids seemed to really love him, even a stepson from an early relationship. As someone else mentions, it would have been good had they mentioned The Man Who Haunted Himself. Still, that doesn't detract from a very entertaining film about a legend of the UK entertainment industry.

Documentary charting the life and screen success of Roger Moore using a lot of unseen footage taken by Moore himself, at home and on set. Rather like the recent excellent documentary 'The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee' it also uses an accomplished actor - here Steve Coogan - doing a near perfect impression of Moore narrating the story and this works really well.

Whilst it clearly took him quite a while to hit success with The Saint and James Bond, he very obviously enjoyed life and was deeply loved by family and his many friends. He remained self deprecating throughout his life and also very blatantly ensured that he and everyone near to him had a comfortable existence. He may have had a little difficulty with his various romantic entanglements and wives - in fact he seemed pretty much incapable of nailing that until the end, selecting women as his partners that didn't seem to fit his persona, but hey ho. My only disappointment was how little is mentioned of the 50+ movies he made other than Bond. You can't have everything I guess and most of them were perhaps a bit meh, but a mention of his excellent turn in 'The Man Who Haunted Himself' which he was rightly proud of, is a serious omission.

From Roger Moore with Love 2024 BBC.

Lovely documentary narrated by Steve Coogan who reads from Roger Moore memories and recollections, as Roger Moore.

Various friends and acquaintances. Who clearly all had nothing but positive memories if this lovely man.

Roger comes across as a warm friendly guy who had a great life. Not necessarily a great actor, but he played Roger Moore brilliantly.

Features clips from Ivanhoe, Alaskan, Persuaders and of course "Bond, James Bond".

Highlights being his home movies if his family and friends.

Nice to see the bevy of Bond girls praising Roger .

Married 4 times he was a ladies man, and they loved him for it,

Lovely stuff 7/10.

...or maybe from Roger with Moore love? If you saw the recent "Mad About the Boy" documentary on Sir Noël Coward, you'll recall the use of a voice actor to impersonate the subject of the story as he narrates it. Well that's the technique used here as the late Sir Roger takes us on a whistle stop tour of his own ninety year life. This film benefits from him being of a generation where the archive is a little more readily available as he rises to stardom, marries a few times, makes his name in the "Saint" (after a bit of tonsil hockey with Lana Turner in 1956) before he takes over from Connery as "007" and the rest, as they say. It appears he was himself an avid film maker so there are plenty of home movies as he entertained the great and good at his Swiss home, and with contributions from his children and a few closer to him than the usual panoply of talking-head movie journalists, this is quite an interesting look at a man who made a career from being a bit of a chauvinist, but who actually comes across as really anything but. Aside from one Golden Globe in 1980, more in the heartthrob category, his industry never really recognised that glint in his eye nor that eyebrow above it with a mind of it's own, so it's nice to reflect on a star who oozed charisma on screen small and large, was under no illusions about his own foibles and certainly didn't take him self seriously at all.