upon first viewing of this movie , the phrases " been there " and " done that " come quickly to mind . 
spy hard manages to steal almost every joke from the zucker brothers films , the most popular of which are airplane and the naked gun series . 
stealing stuff can be profitable in this industry , but only when you steal the right stuff . 
what little plot there is involves dick steele , aka . 
agent wd-40 ( leslie nielsen ) trying to save the world from an almost deranged madman played by andy griffith . 
along the way to it goal ( goal ? ) , the film manages to spoof mainly the james bond type films , but also manages to hit on films such as home alone and sister act . 
the trick about spoofing is that you have to actually be funny , or at the least , satirical . 
spy hard achieves neither , as it borrows all of the wrong elements from the superior zucker brothers films . 
the " dick , the world is in danger . 
what is it ? 
well , it's a big roundish ball floating in space around the sun . . 
 ( i'm paraphrasing ) " type of exchange is used at least four times in the opening ten minutes of the film , each time getting progressively less funny . 
what they should have stolen were the background sight gags which were so effective in the zucker brother's films while writing their own dialogue . 
director rick friedberg focuses more on the mug shots of his actors ( especially nielsen , who can do this quite well ) than on the delivery and context of their lines , much of the time cutting the punchline short . 
the whole film seems to be in a race with itself to be over , as is evident in the final sequence , where there is no comedic denouement after the climax . 
as was usual in the zucker brothers films and in spy hard , the end credits tend to replace this by being out of context . 
one of the more amusing was , " captain of the enterprise . . . . . . james 
t . kirk " . 
overall , i thought this was a very weak effort . 
while all of the right films to spoof were chosen , they used none of the right spoofing methods . 
next time they should " spy " a little bit harder . 
 * * * * = excellent . 
one of a kind . 
must see . 
 * * * = entertaining . 
worth the price of admission . 
 * * = fair . 
nothing much special . 
 * = what were they thinking ? ? 
