Visible crew/equipment: When Mimi is escaping from the castle and swinging on the drain pipes, the wire holding the whole lot up is visible. (00:29:10)
Casino Royale (1967)
1 review
Directed by: John Huston, Ken Hughes, Val Guest, Robert Parrish, Richard Talmadge, Joseph McGrath
Starring: Woody Allen, John Huston, David Niven, Peter Sellers, William Holden, Deborah Kerr, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress
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Average rating
(3 votes)
I watched this movie on Amazon prime.
Yikes. So in my continued journey to watch all the Bond series. I did decide to watch the two original Casino Royale outings (not the Daniel Craig version), including the old black and white one from the 50s. And then this spoof parody of Bond. I watched both of those back to back before moving on to the next in the official series, Majesty.
for this one. The spoof. Oh it's bad. It's not quite down into the I hate it category for 1 star, but it's firmly in 2 star territory. It's poorly written, having the multiple Bonds sub plot makes little sense, the humor is mostly miss with the jokes not landing. There was one or two jokes that did make me laugh pretty hard, notably the one where "Do you speak English?" "No" thing had me rolling.
there was one or two others but it goes to show you I can't even remember them now. Granted it's been a couple months or so since I watched the movie that I'm writing this review.
The plot. If you can call it that, is nonsense. And this feels almost like those bad "Movie Movies" that plagued and destroyed the spoof genre in the 00's.
I can see why this movie is almost never talked about in the Bond discussions. It's not part of the official series. And it's really bad.
Unless you're going for Bond completist like I am. Skip this one. You're not missing anything. It's not worth wasting 2 hours of your life on when you could be watching something else. Not even for the one good joke.
Mistake Status: Yeah no... I don't have any desire to revisit this film.
More mistakes in Casino Royale
M: Debussy. He plays Debussy every afternoon from sunset until its too dark to read the music. Stands on his head a lot. Eats royal jelly. Lets his intestines down and washes them by hand. Something he learned during his sojourn in Tibet.
Trivia: Casino Royale was the only film where James Bond dies until the release of No Time to Die over 50 years later.
Question: At the beginning, M and agents representing the USA, Soviet Union and France try to convince James Bond to come out of retirement. Bond steadfastly refuses; whereupon, M lights his cigar as a signal for British troops in the distance to destroy Bond's estate with mortar fire (M is accidentally killed in the mortar attack). But what was the purpose of destroying Bond's estate? Wouldn't that action only drive Bond further away from rejoining the spy corps? Why would the British government go to such lengths to punish Bond? And then why did Bond return to the secret service, anyway, after such treachery?
Answer: Given that this is a comedy, the thinking was probably "Well, we'll just blow up your retirement so you've got no choice but to come out of it."
Captain Defenestrator