Casino Royale

Occasional fun for the 60's lover, but completely incoherent as entertainment. I should confess that as a young kid I did love the film, just as I loved _What's new Pussycat_, and when I got a little older I became a guilty admirer of _The Blues Brothers_ and _1941_. So I am sucker for the comedy epic/ celebrity ensemble.

However, _Casino_ is simply over the top at being over the top. It seems impossible to create a successful film with 5 directors and 10 writers (not including Ian Fleming, but including Ben Hecht, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern and Billy Wilder !!). The story lacks even a real protagonist; Niven and Sellers trade places in that role. When they run out of story, pie fights emerge, or fusillades of bullets, or tremendous explosions.

The film is certainly not without its merits. Like _What's New Pussycat_ they did manage to corral some of the most beautiful women of the time together in the same film. When Andress is not speaking, as in the "Look of Love" sequence or in Seller's "shampoo" dream she's truly breathtaking. Allen is always funny, and Welles does a pretty good turn as le Chiffre. The Bacharach score and Herb Alpert open and closing sequences are memorable.

As a DVD extra, the American dramatic version of _Casino Royale_ (1954) is included on the DVD, which predated Connery by 8 years!!

To watch this movie, one must understand something that many appeared to have missed. Chiefly, the mish-mashed, ridiculous, over-blown insanity of it is the entire point. It is this that it aims for, and this that it achieves. It is not really a story, so much as every conceivable joke that could be thought of, thrown into an editing studio and spat out the other end as gold. This movie will challenge many who cannot break-out of the mold of needing a firm plot and some commonsense, but in this regard it is much like a comedic version of a David Lynch film, and I enjoyed Twin Peaks: The Movie even if I still don't get it.

So watch this for the crackling one-liners, ridiculously pretty women, lurid sets and the most completely unself-conscious approach to making a comedy that I have ever seen. It goes beyond funny, and becomes a matter of being shocked into admiration for the sheer silliness of it all. And the fun of trying to explain it to someone afterwards is immeasurable.

"So then the flying-saucer kidnaps Mata Hari and James Bond's love-child, and then James Bond who's David Niven and James Bond who's Woody Allen face-off, and meanwhile James Bond is being tortured with insane hallucinations and someone has snuck into his delusions with a machine-gun bagpipe and through all this Deborah Kerr was a French Scotswoman!"

Much less a true story than very funny surrealist art. Like Salvidor Dali meets The Pythons, but odder. And lots of great satire and stuff, too. See it. Now. If only to broaden your horizons.

It helps if you're able to live in Kierkegaard's unfolding moment if you want to enjoy this movie. Or in Fritz Perl's "here and now", to switch hoaxes in midstream.

It's pointless to compare "Casino Royale" to any of the other "straight" Bond films. There is no "plot" worthy of the name. The five disparate directors saw to that, to the extent that the writers didn't. It's a succession of gags, puns, and visual effects taking place in spectacularly designed settings, spoofs of German expressionism, psychedelic imagery, and all that. Some of the gags miss the mark. A British soldier who has been practicing karate chops on wooden boards comes to a stiff attention when his superior approaches and snaps a quivering Brit-style salute, knocking himself out with his own hand. Ha ha.

Such silliness abounds and at times the movie drags a bit, but there is always another joke around the corner. Orson Welles, with his fat cigar at the card table, performing magic tricks with flags and scarves amid flashing lights while everyone whistles and applauds. Peter Sellers trying on different costumes for Ursula Andress, including one of a gruff old general, "There's nothing wrong with the British Ahmy -- that a damned good swim won't cure."

You really can't look for logic in all of this. Listen to the score and watch the performers squeeze the most possible laughs out of their situations. Too bad the movie loses steam at the end so that what should be a climactic pulling together of all the accumulated lines of narrative and jokes is, instead, just plain silly -- clapping seals, parachuting Indians. Ridiculous, but not funny. Writers who have trouble ending absurd movies like this seem to think that a few minutes of chaotic slapstick will serve. "What's New, Pussycat" had the same problem, with people running frantically from room to room in a hotel, a Feydeau farce without laughs. "Sex and the Single Girl" thrust everybody into vehicles and sent them racing down a California freeway with nothing to say. Just about all of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" was an attempt to substitute destruction and speed for wit.

I saw this movie when it was released and laughed from beginning to end. I don't find it quite so funny now, (I don't find ANYTHING quite so funny anymore) but I watch it when I can. It's an opportunity to live in the unfolding moment.

With the baccarat winnings of Le Chiffre giving them access to a new funding stream, SMERSH is on the rise and only one man can stop them – James Bond. But not THAT James Bond, he is only a mere playboy with gadgets, the real Bond retired years ago but now finds himself approached to come out of retirement to counter the new threat. With his pure lifestyle and impeccable reputation, SMERSH send an array of lovely ladies after him to sully his image or, if that fails, kill him. Things get more confusing as many other agents (also called James Bond) get involved!

With only the number of uncredited writers outweighing the number of directors, this film screams 'mishmash' and indeed, it transpires, that that's exactly what it is – a silly mess which amazingly manages to be less than the sum of its parts. To waste any time here discussing the plot would be to give the film credit that it simply doesn't deserve – the makers owned the rights to the actual novel and could have made a 'real' film but instead the outcome is a film that is more like a load of poorly conceived individual scenes. Some of these have funny moments but generally they are silly beyond being funny and are just daft for the sake of it. The design, 'humour', directing and script is all very 1960's and I do not mean this as a compliment in this case.

The cast list makes this film even more annoying – some of the funniest men alive are in this film but yet they are given nothing to work with whatsoever. Niven is amusing at times but he does no more than play his usual personae. Sellers is a comic legend but this film has him doing a bad Bond spoof and he struggles even when allowed to ad lib. Allen is an unusual find here and in fairness he is actually funny because he brings his stand up routine to the role and seems to just be having a laugh as he goes.

Even to waste these three actors is a crime, but when you consider that the film also has Orson Welles, Ursula Andrews, Deborah Kerr, William Holden, John Huston, George Raft, Jacqueline Bisset, Derek Nimmo, Ronnie Corbett, Bernard Cribbins, Peter O'Toole, Stirling Moss, David Prowse, Burt Kwouk, John Le Mesurier and a few others then you have to wonder how so many people were fooled into appearing in this. I can only imagine how good it seemed at the development stage ('Bond but with laughs') but I doubt if any of those involved are actually proud to have this on their cv.

Overall this is a pretty awful film but I suppose you may get a few laughs out of it if you can buy into the silly tone but I'm afraid I wasn't even able to get close to the mind state needed to enjoy this. The laughs come occasionally but they are too rare and the plot and actual script are not big and not clever. The end product – a silly, self-indulgent mess of a film that is actually very hard to work though and not worth the handful of laughs that you might actually have.

This was the Bond title unable to be used by the filmmakers of the regular Bond film series, until the end of the century (they finally got to it for the restart in 2006). So, the intent here was a spoof of the then-wildly popular Bond/spy mania of the mid-sixties. Of course, this wasn't the first such effort; others already began the "Our Man Flint" duo film series and "The Man From UNCLE" on TV was in full swing, not to mention "Get Smart." So, how to outdo them? Get five top notch directors. Get as many sixties stars as possible. Get everything but the kitchen sink (literally, in the over-the-top climax). The original intent was to have each director do their own little mini-movie spoof - an anthology; they ended up editing everything together into one so-called film. A heady brew and, predictably, largely incomprehensible. In addition, actor Sellers, the nominal star, left before completing all his scenes, so his personal trajectory is less than smooth - as if a scene is missing, naturally. If you pay very close attention, you might be able to follow about 50% of the plot, but do you really want to put so much effort into watching a comedy?

Some of this editing is quite clumsy: the first pre-credits scene, a short one, features Sellers, as if the producers are pointing out to us that he is indeed in this movie (he doesn't show up again until 40 minutes later). Welles doesn't show up until the 80-minute mark. The first sequence concentrates on Niven, the real James Bond. He's in retirement but is forced back into a weird plot by the heads of all the world's spy agencies. This first half-hour, except for the scene with the lions, is slow and mostly stupid, not funny-stupid as intended, involving Kerr and a lot of dull fun at the expense of the Irish, for some reason, and painfully obvious joking about Bond's sexual magnetism. There's also one sly poke at the real Bond film series and its gadgetry; apparently, that Bond, of "Goldfinger" and "Thunderball" fame, is actually a replacement for the pure spy played by Niven, who looks down at the concept of gadgets. Things start to pick up a bit later, with the intro of several femme fatales, played by some of the most ravishing starlets of the sixties: Andress of "Dr.No" fame, Bouchet as the new Moneypenny, Lavi and Pettet as Bond's daughter, Mata (why Pettet did not become a major star is baffling to me). Much of the non-plot involves Niven taking over M's operations and naming a bunch of other agents James Bond to confuse the enemy - SMERSH (lifted straight from the books). We finally do see similar plot lines to Fleming's novel, involving villain heavy Le Chiffre (Welles) and one of the Bonds (Sellers) dueling at cards (Baccarat - dramatized differently in the 1954 TV version, yet eerily similar).

Curiously, it's not Sellers who provides the more amusing scenes in this confusing fest, as we would expect. No, that honor falls to Woody Allen, as Bond's nephew, and Welles in his brief scenes conducting some off-the-cuff magic show. Allen's highlight is his very first scene, involving the firing squad. Allen, previously seen in "What's New,Pussycat?," now proves to be one of the most natural comedians for the silver screen. His mannerisms and body movement recall some of the great comedians of the silent era, Chaplin & Keaton, especially evident in the scenes where he can't speak (a mental block whenever Uncle Bond is around). Famous starlet of the seventies Ms.Bisset pops up briefly in a small role as yet another femme fatale. There's also some mildly amusing commentary on the division of East and West Berlin - yes, this was the height of the Cold War - including some almost-clever use of color. But, all the psychedelic stuff, crammed into the tail end of this, is very outdated and useful only if the viewer has smoked a lot of weed. This movie also has one of the worst musical scores - almost like nails on chalkboard to me. If you're in a really good mood, you may be able to sit through this long movie comfortably; if not, you'll probably get pretty antsy as the last third begins - and that's where most of Woody's scenes are. Bonds:4 Villains:6 Femme Fatales:7 Henchmen:4 Fights:3 Stunts/Chases:5 Gadgets:4 Locations:8 Pace:4 overall:5-