Summary
- Spy spoofs like Austin Powers and Kingsman brought humor and fun back to the genre, poking fun at Bond movie tropes.
- Archer and Johnny English offer comedic takes on arrogant spies, creating characters that are both silly and endearing.
- Spoofs like The Tuxedo, OSS 117, and Carry On Spying blend action and humor to create memorable parodies of the Bond franchise.
From Get Smart to the Austin Powers trilogy, there are a ton of hilarious movies and TV shows out there that parody the James Bond franchise. With their goofy one-liners, far-fetched gadgets, and nonsensical villain plans, the Bond movies are an easy target for parody. They even became a sort of self-parody during the Roger Moore years. A movie like Moonraker is so ridiculous on its own that it’s difficult to make fun of.
A bunch of different movies and TV shows have spoofed the Bond franchise. Archer satirizes Bond’s arrogance and self-centeredness. Johnny English imagines what would happen if a bumbling buffoon ended up with Bond’s job. Some Bond parodies are even more enjoyable than the Bond movies themselves.
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10 Spy Hard
(1996)
After spoofing disaster movies and police noirs, Leslie Nielsen turned his deadpan comedic lens to the Bond franchise with the massively underappreciated Spy Hard. Spy Hard might not be an untouchable masterpiece like Airplane! or The Naked Gun, but it has a lot more laughs than its dismal 7% Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest. Nielsen stars as Dick Steele, Agent WD-40, who must track down a megalomaniacal general bent on destroying the world.
The movie kicks off with a Goldfinger-style theme by none other than “Weird Al” Yankovic, and it only gets zanier from there. Spy Hard lampoons everything in the Bond franchise from the globetrotting adventures to the corny one-liners. And not only that; it parodies a whole bunch of different movies, from True Lies to Home Alone, and features cameos from Hulk Hogan, Ray Charles, and Mr. T.
9 The Tuxedo
(2002)
One of the easiest targets for parody in the Bond franchise is the far-fetched gadgets provided for 007 by the Q Branch. These gadgets were spoofed hilariously in the Jackie Chan action comedy The Tuxedo. Chan plays the personal chauffeur to a mysterious client who turns out to be a secret agent. When the spy is put out of commission, the chauffeur has to don his gadget-laden tuxedo – which grants its wearer with special abilities – to complete his assignment.
Chan is one of the masters of action comedy, seamlessly blending high-octane Tom Cruise-style stunts with wacky Buster Keaton-style slapstick comedy. The Tuxedo provided him with plenty of opportunities to flex those skills, and he made for a surprisingly great on-screen pairing with Jennifer Love Hewitt. The Tuxedo is a delightfully silly romp that’s fun for the whole family.
8 OSS 117: Cairo, Nest Of Spies
(2006)
Before Jean Dujardin and director Michel Hazanavicius would sweep the Oscars with their silent movie homage The Artist, they spoofed the Bond franchise (and the spy genre in general) with the laugh-a-minute parody OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. The movie reimagines author Jean Bruce’s character Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath – an American CIA agent of French descent – as a French intelligence officer. The plot sees La Bath traveling to Cairo to investigate the disappearance of his best friend and fellow agent, Jack Jefferson.
Dujardin has both the effortless charisma to play a straightforward Bondian archetype and the comedic chops to pull off a winking satire of it. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is jam-packed with great gags, but it also has masterfully crafted action sequences. This take on the character proved to be so popular that it spawned two sequels, but the sequels never topped the first one.
7 Kingsman: The Secret Service
(2014)
Kingsman: The Secret Service 
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Based on the comic book series of the same name, Kingsman: The Secret Service tells the story of rebellious teen Eggsy (Taron Egerton) as he’s inducted into a top-secret spy agency by a man codenamed Galahad (Colin Firth). After learning that billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) plans to destroy the world, Eggsy and Galahad set out to avert international disaster and uncover widespread corruption that threatens to consume the Kingsman agency itself.
Director Matthew Vaughn Release Date February 13, 2015 Cast Michael Caine , Taron Egerton , Colin Firth , Mark Hamill , Samuel L. Jackson , Mark Strong Runtime 2h 10m
6 Carry On Spying
(1964)
The only thing more British than a Bond film is a Carry On film. And in 1964’s Carry On Spying, the twain met. Carry On Spying looked at the tropes and traditions of the Bond movies through the bawdy comedic lens of the Carry On series. The wonderfully nonsensical plot sees a Bond-like secret agent chasing down STENCH (a play on SPECTRE) to retrieve a stolen chemical formula that could mean the end of the world.
Carry On Spying moves at an agreeably brisk pace – especially for a film from the ‘60s – and it has a lot of fun wringing smutty humor out of Bond’s signature womanizing. Kenneth Williams gives a brilliantly funny performance as the film’s 007 stand-in, Agent Simkins, drawing on his “Snide” character from Hancock’s Half Hour. Carry On Spying doesn’t go for the jugular, but it’s an amiable riff on the Bond franchise nonetheless.
5 Get Smart
(1965)
In the mid-1960s, at the height of the Bond movies’ popularity, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry teamed up to bring a spot-on spoof to the small screen. Get Smart is essentially what would happen if Brooks was given the keys to the Bond franchise. It looks at the spy genre through the absurdist lens of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Don Adams stars as Maxwell Smart, a highly competent secret agent who relies on his immense good luck to get him out of life-threatening danger.
Get Smart lampoons everything silly about the Bond films, from the secrecy of espionage to the convenience of plot armor to the absurdity of Q’s gadgets. The show introduced audiences to such ridiculous gadgets as Absorbo Pills, the Cone of Silence, and arguably the most iconic gadget from the series, the shoe phone. Get Smart ran for five hilarious seasons.
4 Johnny English
(2003)
Rowan Atkinson’s most iconic character will always be Mr. Bean. And his second most iconic character will always be Edmund Blackadder (and his various descendants). But the title character from Johnny English is a very close third. Johnny is a bumbling, buffoonish MI7 agent who dreams of becoming the agency’s top spy and earning the moniker “Agent One.” That dream comes true when Johnny’s incompetence gets all his fellow agents killed, leaving him as the sole survivor and the only one who can complete Agent One’s mission.
The movie essentially asks the question, what if Mr. Bean had James Bond’s job? Johnny English is jam-packed with great wordplay, slapstick gags, and ironic twists of fate, and they all land. Johnny English was followed by two sequels, and they each have their fair share of laughs, but neither of them lived up to the comedic perfection of the original.
3 Our Man Flint
(1966)
In the 1960s, when Bond movies dominated multiplexes, 20th Century Fox decided to come up with its own competing spy franchise, but with a knowing self-awareness. Our Man Flint stars James Coburn as the Bond-esque secret agent Derek Flint, who’s called on to save the day from a trio of mad scientists bent on world domination. It takes everything that’s slightly ludicrous about a straightforward Bond movie and dials it up to absurd levels.
Flint is an even more exaggerated version of Bond. He’s even more competent than Bond, able to squeeze poison out of his friend’s wound without breaking a sweat. He’s an even more shameless lothario than Bond; he has four live-in playmates that he dines with every evening. Flint is such a cold-hearted womanizer that he makes Bond look like a stand-up guy.
2 Archer
(2009)
Archer 4.0 Where to Watch
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Archer is an animated sitcom following the agents and support staff of ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service). Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) is the show’s narcissistic protagonist and ISIS’s star agent, working under his mother Malory (Jessica Walter), and alongside agents Lana (Aisha Tyler) and Cyril (Chris Parnell). With a quirky and irreverent sense of humor, Archer spoofs spy stories with the exploits of the colorful characters that make up ISIS.
Cast Lucky Yates , Aisha Tyler , Adam Reed , Amber Nash , H. Jon Benjamin , Chris Parnell , Judy Greer , Jessica Walter Release Date December 28, 2010 Seasons 13 Directors Adam Reed , Bryan Fordney
Adam Reed turned his love of the Bond franchise into one of the funniest and most underrated animated comedies of the past two decades with his FX seriesArcher. Sterling Archer is similar to 007 in almost every way – he’s the best spy at his agency, he travels the world in pursuit of bad guys, and he seemingly can’t die – except no one in his social circle is amused by his antics. His fellow spies, the pencil pushers, and the head of the agency (who happens to be his overbearing mother) all roll their eyes at his arrogance.
H. Jon Benjamin leads a stellar voice cast with a surprisingly three-dimensional portrayal of a cocksure, one-liner-spouting spy. Archer has a rapid-fire gag rate, sly self-awareness, and beautifully stylized animation. It has a fervent cult fan base, but it deserves a lot more love.
1 The Austin Powers Trilogy
(2002)
Mike Myers combined his love of the Bond films with his love of ‘60s swinging culture with his uniquely absurdist parody Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. This pop culture phenomenon was quickly followed up by two sequels, The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember, and unlike Kingsman, Johnny English, and OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, the sequels actually lived up to the original. Austin Powers is one of the strongest comedy movie trilogies ever made.
The Austin Powers movies hit the nail on the head with their parodies of Bond tropes. They look at the franchise through a delightfully skewed lens and make some truly hilarious observations. One classic example sees each respective henchman’s friends and family being devastated by the news of their death. Austin Powers just might be the best James Bond parody out there.