Cinema: Barbie Goes to Spain

Fathom is yet another lifelike vinyl imitation of spy spoofs, starring Raquel Welch in a title role painful enough to make Modesty Blaise cry U.N.C.L.E. A toothsome dental assistant, Fathom spends her holiday sky-diving in Spain. Recruited by British agents, she becomes involved in a labyrinthine scheme to recover the Fire Dragon, a bejeweled piece of china stolen from Peking.

But she keeps bursting out of her undercover role. Soon she cannot even get on a plane without having a sinister admirer close behind, and even with a program, the viewer has as much trouble as Raquel keeping track of the villains. Is he bleach-boy Anthony Franciosa, who has dyed his hair in an effort to look like James Blond? Or is he Clive Revill, the overstuffed art collector? Are the British agents fakes? Or is the genuine phony really Raquel after all?

Throughout, in bikinis, peekaboo dresses and microskirts, Raquel tries to come on as the movies’ newest sex queen. For that role, her credentials are ample, but Raquel welches on herself every time she speaks. Wide-eyed, openmouthed, understanding things “perfeckly,” going after stolen “objecks,” she seems less a living, breathing doll than an antiseptic Barbie doll who got lost on her way to the nursery.