Duro de Espiar

Dick Steele, Agent WD-40 (Leslie Nielsen) is assigned by his director (Charles Durning), to stop the evil General Rancor (Andy Griffith) from destroying the world. WD-40 believed Rancor was dead and he teams up with the hot KGB agent Veronique Ukrinsky (Nicollette Sheridan) to find Rancor and save the world.

The brainless "Spy Hard" is another spoof with Leslie Nielsen in the lead role in the same style of "Naked Gun". There are gags with James Bond films, "Speed" an "Home Alone". Unfortunately the style of Jim Abrahams and David Zucker is only reasonable and the film is not as funny as should be. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Duro de Espiar" ("Hard to See")

It seems that many James Bond parody movies have been made through the decades since the character was introduced to the silver screen in the early '60s. I haven't seen all of these spoofs, but of the ones I have seen, some of them are funny (like they're obviously supposed to be), and others not so much. Unfortunately, "Spy Hard" is one of the latter. It's not a complete disaster, but a disappointing film in the spoof genre nonetheless, with very little to be remembered by.

Dick Steele, Agent WD-40 is a retired secret agent. However, he is lured out of retirement when General Rancor, an old foe of his, has plans to destroy the world, and Steele is assigned to stop him! On his mission, Steele is joined by Veronique Ukrinsky, a young Russian agent, and together, they must make their way to General Rancor's lair! On their way, many challenges await!

The most amusing and memorable part of this movie is "Weird Al" Yankovic's theme song, a parody of James Bond themes. That song was what lead me to watch "Spy Hard", seeing its sequence from this movie in "'Weird Al' Yankovic: The Ultimate Video Collection". So, in other words, I had already seen the best part of the movie by the time I saw the whole thing. The rest of the movie is nothing special. I lightly snickered at the part when a light tap on the shoulder leads to a fist fight, but for the rest of the film, I didn't laugh at all. Aside from James Bond, several other films are also parodied, but not parodied very well. Basically, "Spy Hard" just has one mediocre gag after another, and not too many are worth mentioning. It's all extremely silly, and not in a good way.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer were writers for this 1996 spy spoof, and since then, they've definitely gone on to do much worse! It appears they started out mediocre (looking at "Spy Hard"), and their more recent work is a crime against humanity, proving they should not be in the comedy business! So, "Spy Hard" isn't the worst film that Friedberg and Seltzer had something to do with (it might even be the best!), but it's still not worth it, if you ask me, and I know many would agree, since it has such a low rating. Fortunately, "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery", another silly James Bond spoof, but a far superior one, was released the year after this forgettable flop.

Leislie Nielsen again , he plays a super Agent , Dick Steele , finding in retirement , he's called for a new mission . He'll fight against General Raucov (Andy Griffith) for world control and being only helped by a beautiful spy (Nicolette Sheridan) .

The picture is the usual ¨spoof¨ or parody featured by Nielsen with similar lunatic characters , quirky roles and strange elements of the predecessors ; thus , it is surrealist , hilarious , extreme and sometimes gross-out . There're gags each fifty seconds . The film is formed by innumerable comical set-pieces and a myriad of unimaginative parodies where the wacky humor and laughs are continuous . The pioneers of these kinds of comedies are the popular trio ZAZ (Jim Abrahams , Jerry Zucker , David Zucker) but here the formula is a little worn-out . The amusement and fun result to be for finding out the numerous cinematic references that successively appear , such as : the credits title of ¨James Bond¨ movie , ¨In the line of fire¨ (Nielsen playing Clint Eastwood lookalike), ¨Pulp Fiction¨ (like Travolta), ¨Sister Act¨(performing a nun , Woopy Goldberg alike), ¨Speed¨ , ¨True Lies¨, ¨Die Hard¨, ¨Home Alone¨ , ¨Dennis the Menace¨ (where acts the same kid , Mason Gamble) and ¨Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid¨ in which acting Paul Newman-alike and riding his bicycle , he plays a bewildering scene under Burt Bacharach music with smile to roar with laughter . Besides , there are several cameos and special interventions as Pat Morita (recently deceased ), Mr.T (as A-Team member) , Alexandra Paul (Baywatch) , Hulk Hogan , Robert Culp , Fabio.. The motion picture will appeal to absurd and unruly comedy enthusiastic.

I've seen that this film has got mostly bad reviews on this website, and i heard that at the time of this movies release, it didn't do well in the box office and was also poorly received, in my opinion though, they are ALL wrong!

This is a great film, you can clearly see that it tries to live up to the great heights of the Naked Gun series, and it has a real go at it, but seriously, what will ever beat The Naked Gun, in comedy anyway...?

There are lots of good gags in the film but i'm not going to spoil it for you, just buy the DVD (VHS if your old fashioned!) and find them out for yourself, it will be worth it believe me!

I would recommend this to any Leslie Neilson fan (like me!) or anyone needing a good laugh....

8/10

The dopey, deadpan character sculptured by Leslie Nielsen is back in a "James Bond-esque" comedy as agent WD 40. There are more gag misfires in this movie, than a parking lot full of dead batteries. However, he's such a likeable guy, you can make it over the hump.

Unfortunately, with the exit of the mad geniuses (The Zucker Bros. & Jim Abrahms), there's little here in this script to wave the pom-poms about. It's all been done too many times before.

Of honourable mention is a priceless, very quick cameo with Pat Morita, which is an absolute gem. There are other assorted scenarios that came off well, too. See it if you must on a rainy Sunday, but this is pretty old, borrowed and blue.