The title of this documentary about real-world men who are named James Bond echoes a famous, winking moment in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service when a young woman runs away after being rescued instead of staying to smooch with her saviour; George Lazenby as Bond, taking over the role from a temporarily retired Sean Connery, wryly says: “This never happened to the other fellow.” The reference is apt because the stories recounted here are all about that glamour gap between the heroic exploits of fictional spy 007 and the regular guys who share his name.
Many of the James Bonds met here clearly loathe it when, for the zillionth time, strangers remark that they don’t look like Connery, Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig. Some parents named them James Bond before Dr No came out in 1962, or if it was out already, they didn’t think the franchise would become that big a deal. In South Bend, Indiana, James Bond Jr first got into trouble as a teenager with the police when he merely told them his name and the cop thought he was taking the piss, because this Bond happened to be black. Years later he was accused of murder, and during the manhunt the name was in the news a lot, causing problems for another James Bond who lived in the same town. We meet an ex-James Bond who changed his last name, and a kooky Swedish superfan who changed his name to James Bond and runs a museum featuring his collection of adorably shonky Bond memorabilia.
The film-makers mostly strive for a whimsical, humorous tone, with quick-cut editing and dramatic recreations of moments in the life of the ornithologist whose name was borrowed by author Ian Fleming. The jocularity, however, is rather punctured by a long story about a woman who was horribly abused by her ex-husband, who kept tracking her down no matter where she moved; she decided to name her son James Bond in order to thwart his efforts to find them because internet searches would throw up so many references to the name. The shift in tone is a bit awkwardly handled; and the film is more than a little repetitious, especially as it twice shows the black-and-white archive clip of Fleming explaining how he chose the name James Bond.
• The Other Fellow is released on 19 May in UK cinemas and digital platforms, and is streaming on SBS on Demand in Australia.
