CASINO ROYALE, a 1967 spoof of the whole James Bond spy genre, has to be one of the messiest films ever made. A troubled production leads to a very troubled picture in which new meaning is brought to the phrase "scattershot". This is a film filled with extremely broad comedy, touches of surreal humour, and a general lack of both cohesion and coherence so that for most of the running time you're wondering what the hell you're watching.
The storyline only loosely follows that of the Fleming novel, despite the misleading title. Orson Welles has a few scenes as Le Chiffre, for example, but what happens to him is totally out of left field. Meanwhile, we get a storyline involving a past-his-prime David Niven as an elderly Bond who recruits various newcomers to the fold, including a poor Peter Sellers. An appears-in-anything Ursula Andress is the crumpet, while the supporting cast in this bloated production is packed with cameoing stars like Deborah Kerr, John Huston, William Holden, and even one Woody Allen playing 'Jimmy Bond'.
CASINO ROYALE has an episodic structure that is generally hard to watch as most of the supposed funny bits are anything but. The stuff set in Scotland is completely interminable, for example, although things do pick up a little for the more traditional climax. It's still one hell of a mess though, worth watching only so you can wonder how they got it so wrong.
The storyline only loosely follows that of the Fleming novel, despite the misleading title. Orson Welles has a few scenes as Le Chiffre, for example, but what happens to him is totally out of left field. Meanwhile, we get a storyline involving a past-his-prime David Niven as an elderly Bond who recruits various newcomers to the fold, including a poor Peter Sellers. An appears-in-anything Ursula Andress is the crumpet, while the supporting cast in this bloated production is packed with cameoing stars like Deborah Kerr, John Huston, William Holden, and even one Woody Allen playing 'Jimmy Bond'.
CASINO ROYALE has an episodic structure that is generally hard to watch as most of the supposed funny bits are anything but. The stuff set in Scotland is completely interminable, for example, although things do pick up a little for the more traditional climax. It's still one hell of a mess though, worth watching only so you can wonder how they got it so wrong.