The Trouble with Spies

this is just terrible. It has an impressive cast but wow, this thing stinks on ice. I was prompted to hit the net looking for what could have been going on in Sutherland's life to set off such a stink bomb in what is otherwise a stellar career. He looks thin. He isn't really in character, he's just phoning it in. Some of the supporting cast look and act like they're from Hammer studios. He doesn't connect with them at all. Ruth Gordon has a few moments that help remind us what acting is supposed to be like, even with the shoddy material she's given to work with. Overall, this thing looks done on the super-cheap: sets are flimsy feel like a sound stage, lighting design looks almost fluorescent, actors are poorly made up with blotchy uneven makeup, and the comic bits of business are straight out of a Three Stooges matinée flick (check out the street scene where he nearly gets run over, in the beginning). It was so painful to watch that I just had to bail. What I cannot fathom is how this thing was put together to start with, I mean was he doing this as a favor to the director? He couldn't possibly have been doing it for some quick money (assuming he was broke or a drug addict or something else leading to dire straits)--there was obviously NO money involved in this flick. His career has been on an even keel, he never went into the dumps like Micky Ruorke or Dennis Hopper. If he didn't do it as a favor to a has-been one-trick pony director, then it's a complete MYSTERY to me. You'd have to be pretty drunk to watch this thing. And even that is iffy.

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.

What a great "blast from the past"!! Totally love both Ruth Gordon and Donald Sutherland. Loved how incompetent the Russians were - and how the governments covered their a**es, so obvious today, even if covered up in the past.

I guess I need to add some more characters in order for this to be valid, so here goes....

why did we like the movie? First of all, we didn't see it when it first came out, so it was a first for us. Second, we liked most of the actors, and the synopsis looked interesting.

But, as stated above, we liked the premise and wanted to give it a chance. While some of the movie was a bit of a stretch, we liked it a lot, even though IMDB requires lengthy reviews, lmao.

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.

British spymaster Robert Morley gets incompetent spy Donald Sutherland to go to Ibiza, when a new drug developed by the Russians is being sold.

It's based on Marc MacShane's novel APPLE PIE IN THE SKY, one of fourteen comic spy novels about the incompetent Appleton Porter. Burt Kennedy wrote and directed the movie, and he hired such reliable comedy performers as Ned Beatty, Ruth Gordon (in her last movie appearance), and Robert Morley. The result is singularly free from much humor. Oh, you may find it funny to watch Morley tell Sutherland what an idiot he is without Sutherland noticing, or Sutherland disguising himself in immense facial hair and a Hawaiian shirt, but it's all done in a rather straightforward fashion, with Sutherland lucking into surviving by pure chance. Even location shooting in Ibiza doesn't help.