totallyaparent This film is a mess, one unrelated scene spliced together in the editing room with another. One of the reason it's so chaotic is the amount of directors (5 overall) The directors had no contact with each other, yet somehow managed to produce a passable film. The film's production had problem after problem, so much problems that I wonder how it was finished.--PLOT-- David Niven is brought out of retirement due to the assassination of British secret agents, you may wonder why I didn't put James Bond in David Niven's place. The problem with that is that they're MORE THAN ONE. I won't spoil anything else. --- The film is passable due to the good aspects. The special effect are brilliant and still look quite realistic today. The casting is good. There are sometimes alright jokes. The music is absolutely brilliant and there are plenty of good scenes in the film. --- Casino Royale could of been better. If it had one director and it wasn't nearly 2 and a half hours. It's still worth a look though due to the effect, music and the pure fun of certain scenes.

atomicgirl-34996 I've been spending the last 20 years in vain trying to sit through all of Casino Royale and give it a fighting chance. Try as I might, I just can't, and this is coming from someone who sat through Manos: Hands of Fate and Plan 9 from Outer Space.Before I rip into it, let me say what's good about it. The cinematography, costume and sets are drop dead gorgeous and perfectly encapsulates the height of "swinging sixties" fashion and the look of movie musicals before cinematography adopted the ugly, dark, muddy look of the 1970s. The soundtrack, by Bacharach, is exemplary.Okay, with that out of the way, this is by far the worst of the so- called "zany" style of comedy that was so popular at the time. It's abysmal, even worse than What's New, Pussycat, even worse than Skidoo. The thing about those last two films is that even though they were bad, they were at least coherent and had some watchable scenes. Casino Royale is completely random from start to finish and so incoherent as to be unwatchable. It was like the movie was shot right after the writers scribbled notes on toilet paper during one of their brainstorming sessions. I'll give you an example of how incoherent it is. In the very first scene, James Bond is talking to M on the front lawn of his mansion when suddenly, the bad guys blow it up. Then M's toupee flies off in a stupid gag, showing that he's bald. But then in the next scene, Bond is going to M's widow to give her his toupee. So M's toupee hadn't just blown off in that first scene. He had also been killed. How? When? The movie never says. It jumps from that scene to the very next one when Bond is comforting M's widow. The entire film plays like this, as if key scenes connecting one scene to the next or explaining important plot points necessary to understanding the story were missing. What passes for comedy is just stupid, cheap, sick, sleazy or juvenile. The worst joke of the movie is when Bond gives M's grieving widow his toupee and she tells one of her daughters to put it with one of the other "hair-looms" (get it? huh? huh? hair-looms! because it sounds like...ah, never mind...). There is also a lot of stupid mugging for the camera, stupid accents, stupid everything.Another thing that's terrible about this movie is the sleaziness. I know that "hot babes" and spy films went hand in hand in the 1960s. However, the sexism was so extreme in this movie it made Matt Helm movies look enlightened by comparison. Case in point: James Bond is invited to take a bubble bath with one of M's hot daughters. So here you have this much older Niven taking a bath with this nubile young woman, who keeps touching him all over and acts like she's two seconds away from grabbing his junk. But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that she asked him to join her because he reminded her of her father, M, and she and her father would take bubble baths like this together all the time. It was like the writers were so hell-bent on having this sleazy scene that they didn't care that they were basically suggesting that there was an incestuous relationship between M and his daughter. A similar thing happens later when Bond meets Mata Hari's daughter and looks mesmerized as she dances practically naked in front of him. As it turns out, she is his daughter, too!Oh, it gets worse. Practically every woman is scantily clad; the ones who aren't are making out with the male characters or trying to sleep with them. In one scene, James Bond tells Moneypenny's daughter, "Your mother did her best work at night." Shortly afterward, we see her in a see-through teddy going down a long row of men in her bedroom, kissing them one by one to find a recruit for some stupid "AFSD" project.I'd forgive all of this sleaze if the movie was at least passable. But it's so, so bad on every level imaginable except for the visuals and music that it's just difficult to sit through. You may hear people try to convince you that it's some kind of cult classic or misunderstood film or has its charms or whatever, but please...I've seen my share of cheesy, bad films. Manos: Hands of Fate, The Oscar, A Bucket of Blood...they were bad but were fun to watch and had coherent story lines. This movie was a dog's dinner.

OllieSuave-007 This is a mindless movie spoof to the James Bond franchise, where a retired 007 is called back out to duty to stop SMERSH, an evil organization that is murdering the spy agents. The plan was to name all the agents as James Bond and trick SMERSH head Le Chiffre in a game of baccarat, but, what results are one bumbling chaotic turn of events after the other.The movie started slow with some unexciting attempt at humor (I guess you need to understand British comedy to appreciate this), but, the film gets a little more exciting once we get into the spy action. The movie then gets a little more entertaining with some constant slapstick comedy and laugh-out-loud moments.Plenty of obvious James Bond references and pretty Bond girls. Not funniest spoof I've seen, but it's mindless fun.Grade C+

merrywater I dig the 60s spy movies. Yes, I truly love the era; it had a lot of class and sheer elegance. I love psychedelic music, and I love Peter Sellers, Burt Bacharach and Dusty Springfield too, but this is a completely inscrutable meltdown. Too many flavors and no recipe.Allegedly a spoof. Did people dig this back then? According to Wikipedia, Time labeled it "incoherent and vulgar vaudeville". It certainly doesn't work today.There are a number of similarities to the excellent "Deadlier than the male" of the same year which, on the contrary,is both stylish and amusing.A crackpot product, in the junkiest sense...