Casino Royale (1967)

Casino Royale is a 1967 spy parody film originally distributed by Columbia Pictures featuring an ensemble cast. It is loosely based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, the first novel to feature the character James Bond.

Plot
After the death of M, Sir James Bond is called back out of retirement to stop SMERSH. In order to trick SMERSH and Le Chiffre, Bond thinks up the ultimate plan. That every agent will be named James Bond. One of the Bonds, whose real name is Evelyn Tremble is sent to take on Le Chiffre in a game of baccarat, but all the Bonds get more than they can handle.

Why It's A Mess Mr. Bond

 * 1) The idea of SIX directors directing the same film is a disastrous idea and it shows. Because of this the film suffers from an identity crisis. Some parts of the film are over-the-top, some feel like a more comedic James Bond film, some feel like a normal James Bond film, some feel like a parody, and some are cartoony. This in of itself makes it hard to enjoy the film since it doesn't know what it wants to be.
 * 2) The humor is pretty hit-or-miss. Sometimes it can be pretty funny like when Jimmy Bond escapes one execution to drop into another or when Cooper is training to restrain his urges to women. Other times the humor falls flat. The part where James is challenged to wassel feels drawn out and too cartoony.
 * 3) While David Niven's acting is good, he doesn't fit as James Bond and would be more suitable as a side-character. In fact, Terence Cooper feels more like James Bond. Although this may have been intentional.
 * 4) The pacing is all over the place. Sometimes things go too fast like when Bond gets his house blown only to immediately cut to SMERSH talking about killing M to suddenly Bond visiting M's widow. Other times it drags on. The part where Bond is in Scotland takes what feels like 30 minutes before we get to the part where the try to kill him.
 * 5) The film created a number of problems upon release and nearly killed the franchise.
 * 6) * This one's critical and popular thrashing and EON getting the blame for it convinced them to go hard after anything even remotely resembling James Bond, which became a HUGE problem with Kevin McClory 10 years later. Only Mike Myers's Austin Powers series has been able to skirt by this.
 * 7) The third act is where the film goes absolutely batshit. First of all, Tremble is put into a strange hallucinogenic where he thinks he's in a Scottish march before being gunned down, it's revealed that SMERSH has a UFO, it's revealed that Jimmy Bond is the Head of SMERSH, Jimmy is forced tricked into swallowing a atomic pill, Frankenstein's Monster, cowboys and Indians, a flying roulette wheel, a monkey, a seal, and laughing gas is dispersed while everyone is trying to escape the casino.
 * 8) Plot Hole: It is never once explained nor is it set up that Jimmy Bond is the Head of SMERSH. He only appears in one scene and then is never seen until the twist near the end.
 * 9) The plot starts off well but is almost incomprehensible by the end of the film. James Bond is brought out of retirement to defeat a new organization SMERSH after M is assassinated. Bond then takes over as Head of MI6 to trick SMERSH and Le Chiffre (one of their agents) by calling all of their agents James Bond which then leads to MI6 recruiting a bacarract player, Evelyn Tremble. Evelyn manages to win a game of baccarat against Le Chiffre only for them both to be killed. This leads to the third act as mentioned above to which the film ends with everyone blowing up and ascending to Heaven, except Jimmy who descends to Hell.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) A good soundtrack that fits the more satirical tone of the film.
 * 2) The film is deliberately "so bad, it's good"...that failed miserably, but thanks to its hazardous development cycle (the film went through six directing teams, and it shows), a cast studded with wasted talent ranging from Woody Allen to Orson Welles, an incomprehensibly muddled "plot", and a finale that completely defies description, it manages to be "so bad, it's good" at being "so bad, it's good".
 * 3) The acting is actually pretty good. Peter Sellers especially, mainly because he was cast when it wasn't going to be a spoof. His performance is funny in a mostly-deadpan way, but he's not on the same wavelength as most of the rest of the cast. This is also one of the few places where you can hear his natural speaking voice.
 * 4) As mentioned there are times where the film is genuinely funny.
 * 5) * Majority of the scenes with Woody Allen.
 * 6) * The main villain's diabolical plan: to release a virus that would make all women beautiful and kill every man taller than he is. Considering Jimmy Bond is the shortest character in the whole movie, this is a dangerously lethal diabolical plan.
 * 7) * During the Le Chiffre imposes on Peter Sellers' Bond, Bond imagines himself marching about with Scottish bagpipers. When one of the bagpipers asks Bond if he is Richard Burton, Bond replies "No, I'm Peter O'Toole." The kicker is that the bagpiper is actually played by Peter O'Toole in a cameo. The bagpiper then answers "Then you're the finest man that ever breathed!"
 * 8) *Cooper's training to ignore women.
 * 9) Decent cinematography.

Reception
Casino Royale received negative reviews from critics.

Roger Ebert, in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote "this is possibly the most indulgent film ever made". Time magazine described Casino Royale as "an incoherent and vulgar vaudeville".

Variety declared the film to be "a conglomeration of frenzied situations, 'in' gags and special effects, lacking discipline and cohesion. Some of the situations are very funny, but many are too strained."

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times considered Casino Royale had "more of the talent agent than the secret agent". He praised the film's "fast start" and the scenes up to the baccarat game between Bond and Le Chiffre. Afterward, Crowther felt, the script became tiresome, repetitive and filled with clichés due to "wild and haphazard injections of 'in' jokes and outlandish gags", leading to an excessive length that made the film a "reckless, disconnected nonsense that could be telescoped or stopped at any point".

Writing in 1986, Danny Peary noted, "It's hard to believe that in 1967 we actually waited in anticipation for this so-called James Bond spoof. It was a disappointment then; it's a curio today, but just as hard to get through." Peary described the film as being "disjointed and stylistically erratic" and "a testament to wastefulness in the bigger-is-better cinema," before adding, "It would have been a good idea to cut the picture drastically, perhaps down to the scenes featuring Peter Sellers and Woody Allen. In fact, I recommend you see it on television when it's in a two-hour (including commercials) slot. Then you won't expect it to make any sense."

A few recent reviewers have been more impressed. Andrea LeVasseur, in the AllMovie review, called it "the original ultimate spy spoof", and opined that the "nearly impossible to follow" plot made it "a satire to the highest degree". Further describing it as a "hideous, zany disaster" LeVasseur concluded that it was "a psychedelic, absurd masterpiece".

Cinema historian Robert von Dassanowsky has written about the artistic merits of the film and says "like Casablanca, Casino Royale is a film of momentary vision, collaboration, adaption, pastiche, and accident. It is the anti-auteur work of all time, a film shaped by the very zeitgeist it took on."

Romano Tozzi complimented the acting and humor, although he also mentioned that the film has several dull stretches.

In his review of the film, Leonard Maltin remarked, "Money, money everywhere, but the film is terribly uneven – sometimes funny, often not."

Simon Winder called Casino Royale "a pitiful spoof", while Robert Druce described it as "an abstraction of real life".

The film holds a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 40 reviews with an average rating of 4.6/10. The website's critical consensus states: "A goofy, dated parody of spy movie cliches, Casino Royale squanders its all-star cast on a meandering, mostly laugh-free script."

Box Office
Despite the lukewarm nature of the contemporary reviews, the pull of the James Bond name was sufficient to make it the 13th highest-grossing film in North America in 1967 with a gross of $22.7 million ($176 million in 2020 dollars) and a worldwide total of $41.7 million ($324 million in 2020 dollars). Welles attributed the success to a marketing strategy that featured a naked tattooed woman on the film's posters and print ads. The campaign also included a series of commercials featuring British model Twiggy. In its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, it set a record 3-day gross for Columbia of $2,148,711. As late as 2011, the film was still making money for the estate of Peter Sellers, who negotiated an extraordinary 3% of the gross profits (an estimated £120 million), with the proceeds currently going to Cassie Unger, daughter and sole heir of Sellers' beneficiary, fourth wife Lynne Frederick. When domestic box office receipts are adjusted for inflation, Casino Royale is 20th-largest grossing of the entire Bond franchise.

Accolades
"The Look of Love" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, losing to "Talk to the Animals" from Doctor Dolittle. Bacharach's score earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Show, won by Mission: Impossible. Julie Harris was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Costume Design.

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