The World Is Not Enough - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

The World Is Not Enough premiered on 19 November 1999 in the USA and on 26 November 1999 in the UK. At that time MGM signed a marketing partnership with MTV, primarily for American youths, who were assumed to have considered Bond as "an old-fashioned secret service agent". As a result MTV broadcast more than 100 hours of Bond-related programmes immediately after the film was released, most being presented by Denise Richards.

The film opened at the top of the North American box office with $35.5 million. Its final worldwide gross was $361 million worldwide, with $126 million in the United States alone. It became the highest grossing James Bond film of all time until the release of Die Another Day. The film was also selected for the first round of nominations for the Academy Award for Best Special Effects but failed. The film was nominated for a Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film Saturn Award, Pierce Brosnan won both the Empire Award and the Blockbuster Entertainment Award as Best Actor, and David Arnold won a BMI Film Music Award for his score. The film became the first in the Bond series to win a Golden Raspberry when Denise Richards was chosen as "Worst Supporting Actress" at the 1999 Razzie Awards. Richards and Brosnan were also nominated for "Worst Screen Couple".

The film was released on DVD and VHS on 16 May 2000, and sold over 5 million copies. The initial release of the DVD includes the featurette "Secrets of 007", which cuts into "making of" material during the movie; the documentary "The Making of The World Is Not Enough"; two commentary tracks—one by director Michael Apted, and the other by production designer Peter Lamont, second unit director Vic Armstrong, and composer David Arnold; a trailer for the video game, and the Garbage music video. The Ultimate Edition released in 2006 had as additional extras a 2000 documentary named "Bond Cocktail", a featurette on shooting the Q Boat scenes, Pierce Brosnan in a press conference in Hong Kong, deleted scenes, and a tribute to Desmond Llewelyn.

Reception was mixed. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert said the film was a "splendid comic thriller, exciting and graceful, endlessly inventive", and gave it three-and-a-half stars out of four. On the other hand, Eleanor Ringel Gillespie of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution disliked the film, calling it "dated and confused". Rotten Tomatoes gave The World Is Not Enough a 51% "rotten" rating, and Metacritic gave the film a score of 59 out of 100. Negative criticism was focused on the execution of the plot, and the action scenes were considered excessive. Entertainment Weekly picked it as the worst Bond film of all time, saying it had a plot "so convoluted even Pierce Brosnan has admitted to being mystified". Norman Wilner of MSN chose it as the third worst movie, above A View to a Kill and Licence to Kill, while IGN chose it as the fifth worst.

Richards was criticised as not being credible in the role of a nuclear scientist. Her outfit comprising a tank top and shorts also met a similar reaction. She was ranked as one of the worst Bond girls of all time by Entertainment Weekly in 2008.