Spectre: less coherent, less fun, and with a swiz of a Bond girl

Quite the oddest sensation last night at the first public screening at the Odeon, Leicester Square, of the new James Bond movie, Spectre, was being at the heart of a really big gathering where no one had a mobile phone. All the smartphones were confiscated at the door for fear of piracy and the spectacle of London’s finest not knowing what to do with their hands was quite something; some people positively talked to each other. The downside was the scrum at the end to retrieve them.

The other odd thing was the feeling of being a bit out of sync with the rest of the gathering. At the same press event for Skyfall, the atmosphere at the end was exhilarated because the audience had had a good time together. This time it was more subdued; there had been only one occasion when we’d all had a good laugh and there wasn’t applause when Bond’s old Aston Martin was hauled out at the end of the film – nothing like the gales of laughter that greeted it at Skyfall.