Miriam D'Abo, Olivia's sister, narrates this documentary as she interviews some of the women who were Bond girls. The girls in the doc all enjoyed being able to show off their femininity, to be beautiful and, in some cases, to show off their strength. It's interesting to see the four main eras of Bond girls, from the relatively placid girls of the Connery age to the forced sex slaves of the Roger Moore era to the de-sexed Dalton girls to the tougher girls of the Brosnan films, from the perspective of the actresses who lived through them. Strangely though, some of the films are ignored, You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, and From a View To a Kill, and with the exception of Ursalla Andress, Honor Blackman, and Carey Lowell, the interviews are too short. Miriam D'Abo is also not the first Bond girl that you would think of to host a documentary on them and a club that includes some ninety women over twenty some films should probably have more than an hour dedicated to them. Despite all this, it's still a satisfying hour that brings up some interesting points to buffs.

Originally created for TV's American Movie Classics to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the first James Bond film, "Bond Girls Are Forever" (2002) collected film footage and new interviews with the leading ladies of those first twenty or so Bond films. The short documentary was slightly revamped in 2006 to include information about the film "Casino Royale". The documentary was co-created and is narrated by Maryam D'Abo, who played one of the more helpless and overall useless Bond girls in 1987's "The Living Daylights" opposite Timothy Dalton. She tracks down most of her Bond movie sorority sisters (a comparison made in the film) to discuss the significance in their lives and careers of having appeared in the series. There's certain repetitiveness to her discoveries, however for hardcore Bond fans the opportunity to see these women again is both exhilarating and disappointing, given the overarching mystique and fantasy elements of their presence in their respective films. The feminist criticism of the series and the empowerment of female characters within the past several entries is discussed, however the absence of Grace Jones, Roger Moore's adversary in "A View to a Kill", was felt by this viewer (as well as the other Moore era actresses Carole Bouquet, Barbara Bach, and Tanya Roberts). Though "Bond Girls are Forever" is a far more interesting entry into the Bond legacy than many other shows made about the phenomena there's a shallowness about it that's equivalent to many of the characters several of the women interviewed portrayed.

So I'm watching the 007 marathon on American Movie Classics, and along comes this show called "Bond Girls Are Forever". You can imagine my surprise when these women, who played characters with names like "Pussy Galore", "Dr. Good Head", and "Octopussy" started talking about themselves as if they were paragons of the women's lib movement! Each in turns claims that she was the first to portray a "strong female character" in a Bond film. Then the next claims she was the first, then the next one was the first, etc. Somewhat comical, just for the way they contradict each other.Then, even more unbelievably, Judi Dench (M in the Brosnan era movies) shows up. I don't thing there's a Bond fan on the face of the planet who would ever think of her androgynous, politically correct, repellent and repulsive hag character as a "Bond Girl", yet here she is. She's glad that "those days are over", referring to the days when Bond girls existed. Not especially appropriate for a show called "Bond Girls", but again, there it is.Someone comments that perhaps they should be called "Bond Women", as "girl" is degrading. At least one of the actresses has the good grace to laugh at this notion. Overall, this is a show about beautiful women, made by people who apparently think that beauty has no value, with only advancement of the cause of feminism being regarded as a worthy accomplishment. The sort of humorless, clueless imbeciles who, thankfully, weren't around to ruin the first 30 years of Bond films.

Interesting documentary about all the different Bond girls over the years, and why they will forever be immortalized. I don't know if this was aired in the States, but I saw it over in the UK and it was interesting as far as these things tend to go.