THE RETURN OF THE MAN FROM UNCLE (1983)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

This reunion of the principals from the 1960s series has a subtitle, but what it should have been named was, "The You Can't Go Home Again Affair."

Wikipedia asserts that writer-producer Michael Sloan created the script for RETURN at age 19, when the original teleseries was still airing. And indeed the telefilm looks like a juvenile assemblage of "cool moments" executed by someone who had little ear for the show's signature tongue-in-cheek humor.

I say "little ear" rather than "no ear" because Sloan does a decent job in catching the voices of superspies Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) as they're reunited fifteen years after both of them resigned from the superspy agency UNCLE. Because their original spy-chief is deceased (in keeping with the passing of the actor who played him, Leo G. Carroll), current UNCLE head honcho John Raleigh (ex-AVENGER Patrick MacNee) seeks out the two ex-spies for help with a current crisis.

A new incarnation of THRUSH has appeared, as major schemer Justin Sepheran (Anthony Zerbe) breaks jail. His agents steal a major nuclear weapon and threaten the world with nuclear blackmail, in addition to asking for a ransom delivered by Solo. Raleigh brings together Solo and Kuryuakin, who immediately fall back into all their old routines.

However, when Vaughn and McCallum aren't playing off each other, the rest of the narrative is dull as dirt, despite such guest stars as Zerbe, Geoffrey Lewis, Keenan Wynn, and Gayle Hunnicutt (given a particularly weak character, given that she's the female lead). There's a cute moment in which George Lazenby, driving a car with plates marked "JB," saves the UNCLE guys with a souped-up car, but this, along with the perfs of Vaughn and McCallum, is about the only memorable movie moment. Sloan went on to write all of the TV-reunions of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, which I remember as being marginally better.