The Trouble with Spies

There are two VERY bad things about this film that made me assume it would stink. First, after being made it sat for three years...probably the best determinate that it is a bad movie. Second, Michael Caine was offered the lead....and he refused it. Now to put it in context, the great actor Michael Caine made quite a bit of crap in the 1980s...films he admitted he only made for the money. But apparently, there was a limit!

Donald Sutherland plays a bumbling spy...sort of like Inspector Clouseau mixed with Johnny English. But these two characters are COMIC characters...but Sutherland's bumbler is played straight. He's sent on an assignment where he is assumed he will die...which is why they picked him because he's so expendable. What follows is, bluntly put, pretty stupid with some of the most ridiculous and dumb murder attempts by the KGB (such as dangling a scorpion onto him in his room...even though scorpion bites are almost never fatal).

The bottom line is that several excellent actors (not just Sutherland but Ruth Gordon, for instance) are totally wasted due to a bad script and filmmakers who seemed indifferent about their 'craft'. Overall, a very bad beginning for HBO Pictures...but fortunately they learned from their mistakes and made some very nice films AFTER this one.

Many Big names in this spy caper. Although there are more spies than caper. They work very hard to get the jokes across. Angus (Robert Morley) sends Porter (Donald Sutherland) on a mission to Ibiza. Ned Beatty and Ruth Gordon are guests staying at the hotel. Lucy Gutteridge plays the hotel owner. Greg Sierra (from Barney Miller) is the po-po who shows up to question the guests. It's listed as a drama, but everyone tells jokes, and then we pause a couple seconds to give us time to laugh. If we really wanted to. I can see why this gets very low ratings on imdb... the script needed a tune-up, in spite of all these big names. And not much meat on the plot. Was the novel really this light, or was too much left on the editing floor? And the opening title was mis-spelled: Spys instead of Spies. That shows the attention to detail this film got. And for a hotel full of spies, no-one even tries to act normally.. they are always talking about what all the other guests may or may not be up to. No surprises. No plot turns. It goes blandly along. Just lacks the spy-adventure that makes us want to see what's coming next. Directed by Burt Kennedy. Novel by Marc Lovell. This seems to be an HBO production.

At the British Intelligence Service's "Dirty Tricks Division" Angus Watkins (Robert Morely) details the flow of KGB drugs from the island of Ibiza that find their way to British miliary bases. The soviets have developed a new truth serum based drug and the division arranges for bumbling recruit Appleton Porter (Donald Sutherland) as lead agent for Operation: Cornfield which Porter is made to believe is focused on locating a missing agent George Trent at the British hoarding house The Royal Rose in Ibiza while his actually purpose is to be used as bait to find the drug.

The Trouble with Spies (also titled The Trouble with Spys for marquee reasons) is a 1987 spy spoof written, directed, and produced by Burt Kennedy and based on the book Apple Spy in the Sky by Marc Lovell one of a series of comedic novels featuring the character of Appleton Porter. Kennedy acquired the rights to the novel as well as several other Appleton Porter novels (no doubt with a mind on making this a series) and set up the film as Home Box Office (HBO) with the film serving as the company's first film production. The film was completed in 1984, but sat on a shelf for three years before De Laurentis Entertainment Group picked up regional distribution rights to the film and upon release the film only made $200,000 against a $6 million budget before fading into obscurity. The movie has only ever been released on VHS and has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray. The movie commits the greatest sin any comedy can: being unfunny and boring.

While Donald Sutherland is a good actor and has shown a strong penchant for both drama and humor, Sutherland is massively miscast as a bumbling British spy and despite the film seemingly setup as a comedic farce Sutherland's take on Appleton Porter doesn't really have a clear identity as a character with him not really bumbling enough to create a memorable dummy as the movie wants him to be. When you compare Sutherland's Appleton Porter to memorable nitwits like Don Adams' Maxwell Smart or Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau Sutherland plays the character way too grounded and close to reality and even if this had been the original choice of Michael Caine I'm not convinced it would've worked there either. But Sutherland's take on Appleton isn't the only problem as Burt Kennedy's script and direction is way too slack with too many dead spots between gags and not enough tension or rapid fire pacing to keep the audience from drifting off. The only amusement the film managed to get from me was with some half hearted smirks involving Sutherland's interactions with a parrot and a dog and there's nothing that any of the actors do that engages on any level.

The Trouble with Spies is a leaden would-be spy spoof that just doesn't work. Donald Sutherland is miscast playing a bumbling fool who isn't all that bumbling in the final portrayal, Kennedy's direction and script is lacking in punch and pacing, and none of the jokes land. There's a reason this has been mostly forgotten.

The movie doesn't know if it wants to be a spy spoof or a serious spy story. It fails at both. It fails in the romance area too. The only good part was the topless beach scene.

British officer porter in a mission in Ibiza, where his mate trent got missing. In a few scenes he should got killes, but he's glad, they failed. Mona, his host, turns out to work for the "usual tricks"-department of the KGB.