Diagonaldi Very well executed

2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

SnoopyStyle Varied international intelligence agencies plead for Sir James Bond (David Niven) to come out of retirement to battle SMERSH. He goes to Scotland where SMERSH agents try to seduce him. Later, he orders every agent to be named James Bond to confuse SMERSH. Baccarat master Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) is recruited to be James Bond to battle Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) at Casino Royale.This is one big mess. The problem is that most of it is not funny. It goes all over the place. Having both Niven and Sellers (and others) be James Bond is convoluted and not worth the very limited comedic effects. Essentially Niven and Sellers are co-leads which leaves this movie disjointed. The movie throws everything on the screen. Sometimes they go all out. There are sight gags and dry humor. However, it's rare to actually laugh. Woody Allen is hilarious but he's the rare consistent comedian. Sellers does a couple of interesting bits. It would have been great if he's the only James Bond going up against Woody Allen as the Bond villain.

Jamesfilmfan905 Casino Royale made in 1967 was initially a vehicle to pry Connery away from Bond when he was disheartened when playing the character for 5 films and before he eventually went on to make you only live twice a year later the offer was made by Charles Feldman he offered him approximately 1 million dollars to appear in his adaptation of Casino Royale which he had acquired the rights to make intending to make it a thriller but when Connery rejected his offer he made it into a spy spoof starring Ian Fleming's first and only choice for the role of 007 David Niven playing an older 007 coming out of retirement to save the world from spectre . And a radical change occurs after M - John Huston is killed Niven takes over mi6 and recruits various trainees to enter a training programme before becoming fully fledged secret agents ( men/women ) then all be called 007 to confuse the enemy its such a preposterous unnecessary edition to the Bond cannon with to many situations characters and needless dialogue Niven gives the only credible performance in the entire film suave and graceful as usual but the rest of the cast and characters in this film apart from le Chiiffe and Spectre are totally unnecessary to the story and should have primarily focused on David Nivens bond in short avoid unless your a die hard Bond fan watch for David Niven exclude the rest of the cast from you memory as the reek of unoriginality and creditableness .

Matthew Kresal Though audiences today are likely to hear "Casino Royale' and think of Daniel Craig's 2006 debut in the role of James Bond, it had in fact been filmed twice before then. The first was a live television version aired on American TV network CBS in 1954. It followed more than a decade later by a feature film produced by Charles K. Feldman. After an attempt to produce a co-production with "official" Bond film production company Eon starring Sean Connery was rejected (likely due to a similar situation have arisen due to issues with the rights to Thunderball), Feldman eventually settled on a different approach to filming Fleming's novel. That approach was parody.The result was released in 1967 ahead of the release of EON's You Only Live Twice. It was a big budget film for its time, costing $12 million at a time and featuring an all-star cast including David Niven, John Huston, Woody Allen, Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, Bernard Cribbins, Barbara Bouchet, Jacqueline Bisset and Ursula Andress among others. It also featured the work of five directors (including Huston and the underrated Val Guest) and was beset by behind the scenes issues that included a budget that doubled over production and clashes between Sellers (who reportedly wanted to the film to be a straight adaptation) and Welles (who regarded Seller as an "amateur").Looking at the film, it isn't hard to understand all the issues. It begins with M (played by Huston) and the heads of several spy agencies approaching the original James Bond (played by Niven) who is living in retirement in the English countryside on a massive estate. SMERSH is ravaging the spy world by killing agents from all sides and they want Bond to do something about it. When he refuses, M gives orders for Bond's estate to be destroyed which eventually leads to M's death and Bond taking over MI6. Already entrenched in parody mode, the film becomes increasingly absurd as it goes along as Bond decides all MI6 agents will now be known as "James Bond" to confuse SMERSH and goes on a recruiting drive. The recruiting drive brings agents including Vesper Lynd (Andress), the oddly named baccarat master Evelyn Tremble (Sellers), Bond's daughter from Mata Hari who is also named Mata as well as Bond's nephew Jimmy (Allen) amongst others. As if that wasn't enough, it goes into an episodic mode that takes the viewer from M's estate in Scotland, the gaming clubs of London, an auction of erotic images in Berlin and the titular casino where not only do Temble and Le Chiffre (Welles) have their card game but which also where SMERSH has its base.As the description may suggest, the film is a hodgepodge and a messy one at that. Indeed, the film's description by the British Film Institute as "an incoherent all-star comedy" is an accurate one though to call it a comedy may be stretching the definition of the word. Many times the film, despite being a parody, isn't funny at all but rather is dull and tedious as it stumbles along from one episode to another. The five different directors and the variety of writers who wrote it mean that the film completely, totally and utterly lacks any kind of cohesion in terms of visual style or indeed tone. The film's last section, a free for all fight sequence set in the casino that ends in an explosion and the various James Bond's appearing in heaven playing harps, is a summation of not just the film but all that is wrong with it: it's a mess.Which isn't to write it off completely. Sections of the film are actually surprisingly faithful to the original novel despite the comic overtones such as the Niven Bond's choice of car (which matches that of Fleming's novels) and it's especially true of the section with Sellers, Andress and Welles set at the casino in the middle of the film The card game is largely played straight once Welles' Le Chiffre gets past doing some magic tricks and Sellers doing a comedy Indian accent. Even in the truly odd torture sequence, which becomes an assault on the mind of Tremble/Bond, there's echoes of Fleming's novel such as Bond finding himself sitting in a chair with the seat removed from it, thus making it even more uncomfortable for Bond. Of all the actors in the film, Sellers is probably the one who comes off the best though his appearances in the film see him dipping in and out before eventually just disappearing (a result apparently of behind the scenes issues) while many of the others are effectively wasted on frankly poor material.At the end of the day though, it's hard not to be utterly disappointed in the 1967 Casino Royale. It doesn't work at all either as a Bond film or as a parody of it. It's a hodgepodge of styles and tones that never works either in a way that's either episodic or as a whole. It's a rare waste of talent both in front of and behind the camera and, as a result, deserves the title of worst Bond film ever made.

Red-Barracuda In order to be able to enjoy Casino Royale on any level you need to be willing to overlook a lot of problems. It had five directors who were originally meant to oversee their own mini-segments which would then go on to make up an anthology movie but in the end all of their work was stitched together as a single piece. Not only this but the actor originally pencilled in to play the James Bond role, Peter Sellers, left the production before the end leaving his filmed parts incomplete and resulting in re-writes to the plot leading to David Niven being wheeled in to play a retired Bond as well as other actors playing Bond clones. Confused? You certainly should be! The factors mentioned above went some considerable way to make Casino Royale such a monumentally incoherent and unstructured film. I lost the plot, so to speak, several times during this. Characters come and go, plot threads go nowhere or abruptly end and lots of things just…happen. All of this results in a plot-line that never bothers to take itself seriously, so why the hell should we? Indeed, the very the fact it's such an obvious shambles is part of what makes it so interesting to look back on.The best way to approach this movie is to just take each scene individually and not spend too much effort piecing them together logically. The phrase the individual parts work better than the whole seems to have been coined with this film in mind. There's no question that its ludicrously overlong for what it is and it's undeniable that it's very bloated and self-indulgent. It wouldn't be unfair either to say that it really only has a few good ideas sprinkled throughout its epic run-time. Yet, for all that, it is deliciously of-it's-time and a true one-off. It was an unofficial Bond film because of an ownership issue that meant that the novel 'Casino Royale' could not be used by the official Bond franchise Eon before the end of the century. Consequently, it was made by an entirely different production company and, for some reason they decided that the best approach would be to make it a spy-spoof that parodied the Bond films.It is notable for its enormous ensemble cast, most of whom must have wondered just what in hell they were doing. David Niven plays Bond as a gentleman spy who is diametrically opposite in style and approach to any other cinematic depiction of the famous secret agent. Orson Welles appears as the master criminal and he and Sellers took an instant dislike to one and other resulting in huge tensions on set. A youthful Woody Allen appears as Bond's nephew and was responsible for all of the laugh-out-loud moments for me. The great actress Deborah Kerr also appears as M's wife in a strange extended sequence set in Scotland. But maybe best of all is the conveyor-belt of gorgeous ladies who were Euro sex symbols of the time – we have Ursula Andress as a secret agent (looking better here than ever before), Joanna Pettet plays Mata Hari's daughter in an extended unrelated segment and a young Barbara Bouchet appears as Miss Moneypenny's daughter. The lush lounge soundtrack by Burt Bacharach is rightfully famous too, including 'The Look of Love' with vocals by Dusty Springfield. And despite its utter senselessness, it is an undeniably gorgeous looking film with great art design and a brilliant cinematographer in Nic Roeg. Its colourful, psychedelic pop art aesthetic never really gets old. It's pretty easy to see where Mike Myers got most of his ideas for his 'Austin Powers' franchise. Casino Royale is certainly an acquired taste overall but if you can get beyond its incomprehensibility you could have a good enough time with its glorious 60's vibes.