Probably the only place most of you have seen this film is in the discount DVD rack at Target, where it sells, depending on your timing, for anywhere from $9.44 to $14.99. Whether or not it's worth even those paltry sums is another story.
Fathom was spawned during the spy craze in the mid-60s, when making films and TV shows with inappropriate casting for spies was okay (Bill Cosby as a spy? Barbara Bain, who won the Emmy over Diana Rigg???). So Fathom was likely born of twin desires; first, to cash in on the spy genre wave, and secondly, to build a showcase for Raquel Welch. I'm not arguing that either was a particularly bad idea, though it sort of turned out that way. The problem with building a showcase around a pretty woman (or devastatingly beautiful, in Welch's case) is that few people ever put any thought into the framework. They get caught up in staring at the girl, and everything else pretty much goes to hell.
Fathom doesn't try to take itself seriously, which is good, because it couldn't if it wanted to. Welch gives it a decent try to play a hapless adventurer who gets pushed in over her head, but it's obvious she's there to model the outfits as opposed to really act. Tony Franciosa plays Merriwether, her chief rival/love interest, and frankly, he's awful. Most of the rest of the cast is forgettable too, with the exception of a very eccentric performance by Clive Revill as the oddball Russian ex-pat Serapkin.
But mostly as expected the movie centers on Welch which again isn't a bad idea, and it's certainly giving viewers what they want. In a scene where she parades down a street in France in a green bikini, the film almost literally stops while everyone catches their breath. Raquel, as they would say in modern parlance, really had it goin' on (though I was more than a little disturbed by a vague resemblance here to Carmen Electra, and hoping like hell no one in Hollywood thought that, because this is NOT a movie that needs to be updated. Even with Ben Stiller playing the Franciosa part).
Fathom is a stupid but harmless movie. Welch always seemed to me to be her generation's Sharon Stone; someone more famous for being famous than for any discernible talent (other than the patently obvious). But Welch did make at least a few good films (the Musketeer movies, in which she was very good) and a few interesting' ones (the ill-fated Myra Breckenridge). She's not particularly good here, but then, she's not asked to be. Fathom never tries to pass itself off as anything more than a cheeky B film, and it's certainly more watchable than comparable drek like Our Man Flynt (which I turned off after about seven minutes). Fathom's obvious falseness shots of Welch skydiving are ludricrously naïve is partially a product of its time, but I suspect it would actually appeal to people who enjoy that sort of camp (you know, Batman fans and the like). And, frankly, it's worth sitting through to have the rather obvious talents of Welch displayed, even though her hair is picture-perfect a second after removing her skydiving helmet (and she wears makeup in bed, too. Always prepared, that girl). I can't really recommend this film for anyone other than Welch fans, or extremely obsessive fans of 60s spy films, but I would bet that to a generation of men only a few years older than I am, this is a film they remember extremely fondly. And I guess there's nothing wrong with that.
Fathom was spawned during the spy craze in the mid-60s, when making films and TV shows with inappropriate casting for spies was okay (Bill Cosby as a spy? Barbara Bain, who won the Emmy over Diana Rigg???). So Fathom was likely born of twin desires; first, to cash in on the spy genre wave, and secondly, to build a showcase for Raquel Welch. I'm not arguing that either was a particularly bad idea, though it sort of turned out that way. The problem with building a showcase around a pretty woman (or devastatingly beautiful, in Welch's case) is that few people ever put any thought into the framework. They get caught up in staring at the girl, and everything else pretty much goes to hell.
Fathom doesn't try to take itself seriously, which is good, because it couldn't if it wanted to. Welch gives it a decent try to play a hapless adventurer who gets pushed in over her head, but it's obvious she's there to model the outfits as opposed to really act. Tony Franciosa plays Merriwether, her chief rival/love interest, and frankly, he's awful. Most of the rest of the cast is forgettable too, with the exception of a very eccentric performance by Clive Revill as the oddball Russian ex-pat Serapkin.
But mostly as expected the movie centers on Welch which again isn't a bad idea, and it's certainly giving viewers what they want. In a scene where she parades down a street in France in a green bikini, the film almost literally stops while everyone catches their breath. Raquel, as they would say in modern parlance, really had it goin' on (though I was more than a little disturbed by a vague resemblance here to Carmen Electra, and hoping like hell no one in Hollywood thought that, because this is NOT a movie that needs to be updated. Even with Ben Stiller playing the Franciosa part).
Fathom is a stupid but harmless movie. Welch always seemed to me to be her generation's Sharon Stone; someone more famous for being famous than for any discernible talent (other than the patently obvious). But Welch did make at least a few good films (the Musketeer movies, in which she was very good) and a few interesting' ones (the ill-fated Myra Breckenridge). She's not particularly good here, but then, she's not asked to be. Fathom never tries to pass itself off as anything more than a cheeky B film, and it's certainly more watchable than comparable drek like Our Man Flynt (which I turned off after about seven minutes). Fathom's obvious falseness shots of Welch skydiving are ludricrously naïve is partially a product of its time, but I suspect it would actually appeal to people who enjoy that sort of camp (you know, Batman fans and the like). And, frankly, it's worth sitting through to have the rather obvious talents of Welch displayed, even though her hair is picture-perfect a second after removing her skydiving helmet (and she wears makeup in bed, too. Always prepared, that girl). I can't really recommend this film for anyone other than Welch fans, or extremely obsessive fans of 60s spy films, but I would bet that to a generation of men only a few years older than I am, this is a film they remember extremely fondly. And I guess there's nothing wrong with that.