The London Connection

When Walt was alive, Disney films were great: fifteen-Kleenex tearjerkers, lots of monkey business with Hayley Mills, and the promise of Annette Funicello if only you'd Stay in School. But since their presiding genius copped it, the studio's films have developed increasingly terminal 'cute plots': flying beds, cars that think faster than they run, brontosauri that get shunted around town by stuntmen in drag. This one features the clean-cut Hardy boy and a fellow American he visits in London; together they help a defected East European scientist save his 'unique energy formula' from the clutches of a dubious syndicate. Back home, our jock hero works for his 'uncle' (Uncle Sam - geddit?), and things are made pretty easy by his array of sub-Bond defence devices. There is one impressive stunt, but the plot is such a bland-out you may be asleep when it happens.