Casino Royale (1967)

Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish

UK

131 mins, color, English

A dreadfully unentertaining psychedelic James Bond spoof that is so involved with its pretentious (and imaginary) zaniness that it forgets that humor must be at minimum somewhat funny, at least from time to time. I barely sat through the damn thing and if I weren't the obsessive watch-through guy that I am, I would have walked right out of my own apartment in protest. How FIVE directors managed to WASTE the talents of so many DECENT actors will remain forever a mystery together with the Loch Ness Monster.

David Niven is the aging James Bond who gets called on to take on SMERSH. Ursula Andress and Daliah Lavi provide so much eye candy that one might quite literally forget about the sheer stupidity that is unfolding before his eyes. Peter Sellers should have fired his agent for getting him this role. Woody Allen delivers his absolute best ever performance. Hahahaha.

I was too bored to follow the ridiculous plot that makes the ridiculous James Bond plots seem like worthy dramatizations of War and Peace. Briefly, Bond is trying to do something bad to some evil guys, but it turns out that his son Jimmy (Allen) has been hatching a truly evil scheme that involves tying beautiful naked women to operating tables (that was not the evil part, killing world leaders was the evil part, this part I just threw in for the hell of it). Ursula mostly stares longingly at Peter Sellers, which nearly won her an Oscar but did not because she kept her clothes on. At least a real Bond film would never commit this offense!

I would rather see Austin Powers twice in one day than watch this boring dud again. Avoid! Avoid! Avoid!

As if the film was not punishment enough, there is a `making of' featurette hosted by one of the directors; I forget which but does anyone really care? At least it makes obvious what I should have realized all along: everyone was stoned, most of the people on camera were simply bystanders who happened to walk by the set, the directors were doing a peasant rebellion against the studio, and Peter Sellers is more of an asshole than Orson Welles (something I still find hard to believe, but there you go).

Unfortunately, the DVD is very good, which is probably why I still have not sold it on eBay. It boasts a 1:2.35 anamorphic widescreen transfer that is remarkably clean together with a modern DD 5.1 remix of the soundtrack (the original mono is also available). There's the making-of featurette plus the original made-for-TV eponymous movie and a trailer. It's nice that MGM has taken to making crap available in such excellent releases.

May 31, 2003