The film at first actually owes more to "The Property of a Lady," another of the short stories in the Octopussy & The Living Daylights collection. In the short story, the Russians pay off a spy in the Secret Service by arranging for her to "inherit" a Fabergé egg from a supposed distant relative, which she then has auctioned off. The story is pretty simple stuff; Bond goes to the auction to see if the Russians have planted anyone to drive up the price so that their agent gets more money. They have, and he nabs them. The plot of Octopussy is considerably more complicated; the Russians are making fake Fabergé eggs (among other jewelry) but auctioning off real ones in the UK. Another 00 agent steals one of these duplicates from a circus in Berlin, so the Russians need to get the real one back when it's auctioned off. Okay, but why are they doing this? My wife and I paused the film a number of times trying to figure out the plot, and never really did. The last act is all about a crazed Russian general using the jewelry smugglers to plant a nuclear bomb in a circus performing at an American military base in West Berlin; it will look like an American bomb went off by mistake, meaning Western calls for unilateral disarmament will be successful, allowing Soviet tanks to sweep in and conquer western Europe. But why are they duplicating and smuggling jewelry? Just as a lucrative side hustle? I guess so.
I mean, I get that Bond villains often have overcomplicated plots, but no one in the movie even stops to act like this one makes sense.
The plot of the short story "Octopussy" actually does come into play. Bond, investigating the smuggling, goes to India to look into an exiled Afghan prince; while there, he meets "Octopussy," who has repurposed an ancient octopus cult as a smuggling concern that manages circuses too. In the story, Bond finds out a former British army officer killed a ski instructor and stole some gold; he goes to arrest him, but gives him twenty-four hours to turn himself in, during which the man commits suicide. (In the story, it is suicide by his pet octopus, "Octopussy.") In the film, this happened many years ago, and Octopussy is the daughter of the man. I'm not really sure why the plot of the short story is wedged into the film like this-- Octopussy rattles all this backstory off in a quick speech, and then none of it is ever relevant to anything.
Anyway, outside of all that, this is a pretty typical lower-tier Roger Moore Bond film. At their best, the Moore Bond films have these sublimely ridiculous vehicle moments, and Octopussy has a few of those: a plane hidden in a horse van in the teaser sequence, a chase through an Indian bazaar in three-wheeled taxis, a crocodile submersible for aquatic infiltrations, Bond's car shredding its tires but then sliding onto a railroad track and chasing a train(!), a hot-air balloon with a Union Jack on it. But none of these quite approach the sublimity of similar moments in For Your Eyes Only or The Spy Who Loved Me.
The Bond girls are perfunctory, too. Maud Adams didn't really win me over as Octopussy; for the leader of an international smuggling ring, she comes across as pretty wimpy. Kristina Wayborn seemed unnatural as Magda. As always, Roger Moore's flirtation is so perfunctory it's hard to imagine anyone could actually be charmed by him, though he's not as smarmy and boorish as he would be in his next and final film, A View to a Kill.
At the beginning of the film, 009 appears briefly; he's dressed as a clown. I thought to myself, "I bet 007 never has to do anything as undignified as that." At the end of the film, Bond dresses first as a gorilla... and then, well:
His big heroic moment comes when he's dressed as a clown! Do you think they will make Daniel Craig do this in No Time to Die? It was all a bit ridiculous in the worst way. (Moore's comedy chops really come through in the awesome sequence where he hides inside the gorilla costume, though.)
I think there was promise here. India looks great, and there are lots of neat ideas. But the whole thing feels aimless and sloppy, like it was made up as they went along.
- The film introduces an assistant for Miss Moneypenny, Penelope Smallbone. I'm not sure why, because she is only in one scene, has nothing to do with anything, and never appears in another Bond film. Was she designed as a potential replacement for Lois Maxwell that was never used? (When she did eventually leave the role, they would just recast.)
- This is the fifth Bond film I've seen with General Gogol in it; he was antagonistic to Bond in some of the earlier ones, but here, despite being head of the KGB, he is a figure of reason, opposing the plan of the villain.
- Speaking of which, Bond doesn't even get to take out the main villain himself; Gogol has him gunned down as he tries to cross the border from East to West Berlin.
- One small role is Vijay Amritraj as, um, Vijay, a Section I agent who helps Bond out in India. The actor and character are immensely likable-- which means, of course, that he is utterly doomed.
- Gary Russell-- who would go on to write a number of very bad Doctor Who novels and to mastermind Big Finish's Doctor Who range during its first seven years-- briefly appears in the film as one of a group of joyriding teenagers who don't give Bond a lift.
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