Casino Royale

Psychedelic secret agent satire with a superlative cast

A mysterious organization named SMERSH is killing off notable spies from top countries compelling James Bond to come out of retirement (David Niven). Peter Sellers plays a younger James Bond agent while Woody Allen is on hand as a diminutive James Bond. Orson Welles plays the lead heavy while William Holden and John Huston have small roles.

Casino Royale (1967) is notorious in cinema and generally loathed by critics & cinephiles, but its actually superior to contemporaneous spy satires like In Like Flint (1967) and Fathom (1967).

It was intentionally made with four different directors in mind for four separate segments, but ended up with six directors. There were orig...

Very boring comedy. Mostly just forgettable. Niven plays Bond, and the story tries to be funny, but the humor is too dry for me, or too lame. I'm not sure which it is. I couldn't follow the story line, so let us just say it is confusing. A big climax at the end is something you probably won't expect. Still, at 3/10, it is three times better than the serious 007 version of Casino Royale.

I've given up counting the number of times I've tried to make it all the way through this film, and now that I finally have I didn't hate it. There's a nefarious plot gripping the world and "M" (John Huston) has convinced his opposite numbers in France, Russia and the United States that there's only one way to thwart this dastardly plotting. Enter the original, newly knighted, "Sir James Bond" (David Niven) who undertakes the task of heading up the new "007" division and tracking down the criminal mastermind behind "SMERSH"! What now ensues is split into segments and each involves a separate strand in their search. It's not that these aren't entertaining enough, up to a point, it's that they are all just bit contrived to maximise the faux-m...