| | A magnificent train wreck of a film--the ride is fun, but the smash-up in the last five minutes gets rather painful.
According to the Internet, they took the only Bond story whose movie license wasn't already secured--it happens to have been the first one that Ian Fleming wrote--and, seeing that they had no hope of competing with the established Bond series, decided to turn it into a send-up of the whole spy movie thing. And then (this part is my own theory) they smoked a lot of dope, cast a massive amount of well known actors, hired five directors (that part is true) to film a bunch of bizarre scenes, making sure to get a lot of attractive young women in the shots, edited them together in the dark, and called it good.
And it is, in a wacky, nonsense sort of way. Some of the lines and situations are absurdly amusing, and you can't but like David Niven and Peter Sellers both as James Bond; it's a Pink Panther (see entry 24) reunion of sorts, even down to the Royale's cashier being Clouseau's sidekick from A Shot in the Dark (see entry 26). From crazed Scots seductresses in the Highlands to flying saucer abductions in the middle of London, the thing is about as far out as you can go.
And a little further, especially toward the end, as fewer and fewer of the scenes gel together, and the house comes crashing down--literally, even. The music knows it is falling apart, and doesn't care. Ah, those were the days, I suppose. Couldn't get away with something like that these days.
Besides Niven and Sellers, Ursula Andress, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, and John Huston are fun to watch, even in scenes that make little sense. This is one of those movies where you have to go in knowing that it is an awful movie, and getting what fun you can out of it. In that very particular way, Casino Royale has a lot to offer. And I have to say that I was amused to see what they came up with for the next "generation" of Bond characters--the original Bond is old and semi-retired in this movie, you see--and damn, Moneypenny's daughter is hot.
Aside from the ending, the sound quality of the DVD version I saw really sucked--the Burt Bacharach soundtrack was way too loud, and the conversations way too soft, and sounds would suddenly move back and forth between speakers for no good reason. Bad, very bad work there. |
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