The World Is Not Enough: Critic Reviews

The script is not enough in The World Is Not Enough.

The only bright spot is John Cleese's brief appearance as Q's associate, R. Could we pretty please have Cleese play Bond in the next one?

Sees 007 undone by villainous scripting and misguided casting and acting in a couple of key secondary roles.

Familiar and competent, the last Bond film of the millennium adheres to the formula and mostly succeeds in meeting the ritualistic demands of the series.

Not enough to add up to a fully satisfying movie.

Jiggled, not stirred.

Though in story The World Is Not Enough is not one of the best Bonds, pound for pound it delivers as much thrilling action as any of them. [Blu-ray]

The theme song is performed by Garbage, as the band's name perhaps tells you all you want to know about this thriller.

The film tries very hard, and sometimes the effort pays off, but overall this is a compromised effort that recalls LICENCE TO KILL in the wrong way: it wants to be different but lapses back into the same old, obligatory set pieces.

...ultimately comes off as a superior James Bond adventure...

Brosnan and Carlyle breeze through an upper mid-league Bond that doesn't attempt to fix what isn't broken.

a good flick

Easily the most boring of the Brosnan adventures.

Pierce Brosnan has finally settled into the role of James Bond.

I liked it better than GoldenEye, but not as much as Tomorrow Never Dies.

Apted ensures it all passes by efficiently enough. And his extraordinarily well staged opening salvo is one of the most impressive Bond sequences yet.

In his first action flick in a long career, Apted succeeds in both the character stuff and the action scenes. Something had to give, and it's the plot.

Even with [its] lame dialogue, the film would potentially have been redeemed had Denise Richards not been cast as arguably the worst Bond girl in the entire franchise.

Might be good film, but only for those who haven't seen many Bond films.

Proves that a movie with a formula isn't always a terrible thing. For as long as gorgeous women, sadistic villains and special-effects exist, James Bond lives.

For a movie whose first order of business is chases and explosions and boats and babes, it is not half bad.

Convoluted plotlines, high-tech gadgetry, gross sexism, and stuff blowing up. I have no idea why so many men like this stuff.

...suffers from a plot that meanders, a villain with little to accomplish, heroines we care nothing about, and a frenetic tempo that ends up more tedious than stirring.

The elaborate chases, escapes and explosions begin to seem forced and disconnected; the pun-laden wisecracks fall flat. The final half-hour or so of the movie, for all its polished firepower, seems interminable.

Cleese may only be in a few scenes, but he adds his unique humor to the film, giving moviegoers something to look forward to in the next Bond adventure.