Slap af Frede!

The good news is that this 1966 sequel to "Slå først Frede!" ("Strike First, Freddy!", 1965) is an inoffensive and occasionally funny spy spoof.

The bad news is that it's a letdown after the first film: the funny bits are relatively few and far between, the bad guys are less entertaining, the plot is not as clever and character development is lacking. The pace is very VERY slow by 21st century standards, but that's to be expected in a 1960s adventure/spy movie. There is a fair amount of James Bond-esque eye candy and even a little bit of tastefully done nudity. There is also a lot of talk about sex, which was still a big deal in 1966. Overall it barely rises to the PG-13 level, mostly due to one scene where the characters are smoking something suspicious.

According to "Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Cinema", the two Frede films and "Martha" (1967) were Erik Balling's and Henning Bahs's early joint efforts which eventually led to the famous "Olsen-banden" ("The Olsen Gang") series. I guess we can chalk up some of the shortcomings to "growing pains".

The actors do the best they can given these constraints and the results are generally watchable if you can accept that things are going to be slow. 5-6/10 overall.

Reuniting the team behind the first, this can't get entirely away from being a sequel to it... which, in itself isn't a bad thing; however, with the occasional reused joke, the going over the top to meet the heightened expectations and the fact that this just doesn't quite have the impact of the original simply prove that this concept should not have been a series. There's not enough substance to carry more than one movie(unlike The Olsen Gang series, and it should be noted that it started after these two came out, and that it wasn't until the fifth entry that they had perfected the formula of the franchise, and took a step up from the typical farces in Denmark of the time). Each of the three Austin Powers flicks had something new to add, an approach that differed at least slightly from those before it. With that said, this does have many hilarious moments. Dirch Passer, one of our greatest comic talents of the era, gets a part tailor-made for his talents. The characters are thin and a tad one-note this time around, as so often happens with follow-ups to goofy features. Sprogøe hasn't lost the touch in the least. Grunwald is charming and daft(sans being annoying). Mørk is a good addition, if perhaps inferior to Kolick and Dr. Pax, and less memorable. They think of new gags and jokes so the old ones(at risk of growing stale) aren't all we're served, and the Italian and Chinese stereotypes here are pretty funny, without being excessively offensive. The camera continues to communicate fairly well, if there are points in this where it comes up short. There is rather a lot of inventive setups, and the amounts of creative gadgets, chases, fights and explosions are sufficient. The pacing is arguably uneven, and some cuts rip you out of the scene, ending too swiftly. This doesn't seem to excite the way "Slå Først, Frede" did, and while that one had relatively little in the way of a sense of danger, this has less still. The plot is competently written, and there is genuinely marvelous stuff in this. This has eye candy, though briefer nudity. Violence is mild and non-threatening. The DVD comes with a bunch of trailers for other Nordisk Film releases of the period, biographies and a photo gallery of twenty stills. I recommend this to big fans of spy spoofs, and/or those involved in making it. 6/10