For Your Height Only
He’s tough. He’s tender. He’s three feet tall.
Evil quakes for only one man: Agent 00. Sure he’s no taller than most nightstands, but Agent 00 (Weng Weng) is a force to be reckoned with. No thug can survive his tiny fists of fury, and no woman can resist his compact charms. Agent 00 faces his biggest challenge when he finds himself entangled with the expansive crime syndicate run by the enigmatic and notorious “Mr. Giant.” Working with a beautiful undercover agent named Irma, Agent 00 must call upon all of his investigative skills, combat training, and seductive wiles to defeat the unwavering horde of goons and bring justice to Mr. Giant.
What a great, fun, profoundly weird movie. A far-out take on James Bond films (featuring strangely similar music), For Your Height Only is hilarious—but I’m not entirely sure it was supposed to be a comedy. All the elements are there to earn it that genre assignment, but I’m still not sure. There aren’t enough “comical” moments to convince me that this isn’t merely a hugely nuts film that is so crazy it’s funny.
And that’s fine. If the filmmakers wanted to play it straight—and I suspect they did—all the better! Weng Weng is awesome as Agent 00, mainly because he plays the role as a legitimate spy. He’s not clowning around or trying to make contrived humor work; he’s playing the tough guy role straight, and that juxtaposition with his small stature is fantastic.
Look, I’m not trying to pick on little people, and I don’t think this film is doing that. In fact, by giving Weng Weng the straight role is, to me, an act of better taste than the stream of shameless and unfunny “midget” throwaway jokes you see so much in comedies these days. I need to pause here to say, again, that this film is more awesome than your life.
For Your Height Only isn’t boring either. Director Eddie Nicart has packed his surreal gem silly with action; Agent 00 must get into at least one fight every six minutes or so. Why the goons are rendered unconscious by one of Weng Weng’s little fists, I don’t know, but I liked it! (Agent 00’s preferred method of dispatch is the trip-and-dual-foot-plant-in-the-crotch.)
The last element that makes this film so uproarious is the dubbing. It’s horrible, of course, but horrible in a good way. Whoever voiced Weng Weng did a few lines of coke chased with some helium before getting on the mic. But the best performance goes to Agent 00’s superior who mumbles incoherently about the gadgets he’s crafted for his superstar agent.
Other stuff from For Your Height Only that’s great:
• Agent 00 parachuting from a balcony with an umbrella
• Mr. Giant’s reveal.
• The mini-jet pack.
• Agent 00’s shameless abuse of the X-ray specs.
• The climactic island shootout; folks it’s a massacre.
• Weng Weng chillin’ at the pool with the ladies.
• “Let’s get it on.”
• Groin kick #359
• A hand-to-hand finale of diminutive proportions.
• Agent 00’s sweet-ass white leisure suit.
Where Mondo Macabro unearthed this prize I’ll never know, but I’ll be forever grateful they did. Agent 00 has touched my life in ways that no one will ever know. If you consider yourself a connoisseur of crazy flicks, you owe it to yourself to seek this one out. You won’t be disappointed. And if you are I I never want to talk to y0u again.
Original review here.
