Casino Royale (1967) - NR

Silly 007 spoof tamer than Austin Powers.

Rating: NR for not rated Studio: MGM Home Entertainment Directed By: John Huston, Ken Hughes, Val Guest Cast: David Niven, Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress Running Time: 131 minutes Release Date: 04/13/1967 Genre: Comedy

Common Sense Note

Parents need to know that this is not the serious 2006 version of Casino Royale, but rather a wild, pull-out-the-stops comical put-on of the 007 films, done in 1960s "psychedelic" style. It's really a lot like the later Austin Powers spoofs, right down to the disjointed and nonsensical plotting. And, like Austin Powers, this makes much of the erotic content of the James Bond adventures, with luscious women as sex objects. Overall, though, it's at the milder end of the smut and vulgarity scale than Mike Myers' movies, and parents won't be squirming so much through it -- unless they're bored. Still, some parents might also object to the romanticization of high-stakes gambling as a way to defeat the bad guys.

Families can talk about the strange story behind this film and the many, many star actors, visual references, and celebrity gag cameos that most kids won't know -- like Jean-Claude Belmondo, George Raft, and the Berlin Wall -- that had instant audience recognition at the time. Their very appearance was meant to get a laugh. Tell kids that when they're grownups, young audiences might fail to comprehend jokes about Britney Spears or Saddam Hussein from today's comedies. Parents might also use Casino Royale to point out the difference between short-lived, topical humor and the more universal comedy of Charlie Chaplin or even Charlie Brown, that still holds up decades later.

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Common Sense Review

Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.

The 1967 CASINO ROYALE wasn't the only James Bond spoof by a long shot. Not even the only one of the 1960s. But it was indeed the biggest -- so overstuffed with gags, sets, international stars, and mainstream-movie excess that it become something of a legendary folly, much as Waterworld or Heaven's Gate symbolized later generations of filmmakers fatally overdoing it.

Five directors -- what were they thinking? -- were hired for this verrrry loose take on Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel. In contrast to occasional anthology movies like Four Rooms or the Edgar Allen Poe collection Spirits of the Dead, in which several guest helmers contributed a self-contained short subject, the original Casino Royale plan called for each director to cover a narrative thread, then pass the script along to the next in line; kind of like a classroom storytelling exercise -- only with between $6-$25 million invested.

Late in the production, someone realized that the resulting film was an epic mess, with practically no continuity. British director Val Guest got special credit for trying to tie it all together coherently. What's more, a key actor -- the top-billed Peter Sellers -- feuded on the set with Orson Welles, with whom he was supposed to play crucial scenes. Sellers quit, requiring more rewrites, body doubles, and reshoots. A movie about the making of Casino Royale might prove funnier than the film itself.

And -- unless you like your Bonds completely straight-faced -- the film is funny, in its overindulgent, zany way. At the start, leaders of major military powers -- the United States, France, Britain, the USSR -- all visit retired, debonair superspy Sir James Bond (suave David Niven, who, as a younger man, was favored by Ian Fleming himself to be the perfect embodiment of Bond). They beg his help because all of their secret agents are being liquidated by a mysterious organization called SMERSH. The aloof, bachelor Sir James, it turns out, leads an entire family of Bonds, right down to a wimpy nephew "Jimmy" Bond (Woody Allen) in the spy business. The "real" James Bond of Goldfinger is mentioned, but never seen, and dismissed by Sir James as a sex-maniac imposter.

After he escapes attempts by SMERSH to assassinate him, Sir James decides to confuse the enemy by creating and renaming even more "James Bonds," via training exercises with gadgets and seductively beautiful women. One of the recruits is Sir James' own long-lost dancing-girl daughter Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet), partially named for her mother, espionage legend Mata Hari. Another unlikely "James Bond" is Evelyn Trimble (Sellers), a bespectacled expert in card-playing. He's enticed by sexy superspy Vesper Lynde (Ursula Andress) to win a high-stakes gambling match against Le Chiffre (Welles), a SMERSH underboss, in the lavish Casino Royale (just about the only part of this that's a holdover from the Fleming source material).

In the finale (reminiscent of Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles), the plot gaily goes to pieces, with cowboys and Indians (the latter descending via teepee-shaped parachutes), armed squads of lovely girls in outrageous costumes, performing seals and chimps, the Frankenstein monster, a flying saucer, a mind-torture device generating an army of marching Scottish pipers, and the whole cast going to heaven.

Casino Royale wasn't really a box-office disaster, but it remains a goofball outcast among the Bond movies. Kids, especially the fans of Austin Powers and Mini-Me, should enjoy the playful tone, Mad magazine elements, and spy-vs.-spy antics, though there are several moments that may bore them -- like some long-winded dialogue and seduction scenes set to sleepy Burt Bacharach music.

This movie isn't to be confused with yet another (!) Casino Royale, a black-and-white TV hour-long version from 1954 that marks the first, inauspicious appearance of James Bond on the screen. That one (which circulates independently on VHS and shows up as an "extra," for the very curious, on the DVD of the 1967 Casino Royale) is a straight, faithful adaptation of the book with but one giggle-worthy alteration: James Bond (Barry Nelson) is an American agent!

Fans of this film may also enjoy Sweet Charity, another late-'60s film that inspired many scenes from the first Austen Powers. For a better Sellers vehicle, try the quirky and touching Being There.

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Content		CS	adults	kids
Content
Sexual Content Much non-clinical sexual innuendo and beautiful, scantily-clad girls. One actress is entirely nude and covered just by strategic metal restraints on a table. A few others are fleetingly glimpsed covered in gold body paint. A man and a teenage girl take a bubble bath together. Mostly the sex is all talk ("Doodle me!" a Scottish vixen says), with hallucinatory montages of female faces in ecstasy as the only action. A young woman reassures her own father than she's not a virgin.
Violence Slapstick brawling, falling, punching, and martial arts (including one sequence in which seductive women are rebuffed by judo-flips). Much gunfire, but rarely any blood. One character is visibly shot in the head, and another is in a phone booth that explodes. Birds are hunted with rifles. Explosions, bows and arrows, and military artillary.
Language Some use of "damn." Jean-Paul Belmondo repeatedly utters a French swear word (inaccurately translated as "ouch").
Message
	Social Behavior The "original" James Bond (David Niven) is a stalwart, upright English gentleman of the aristocracy (even if he has an illegitimate daughter by his lost love), while most of the other characters are slippery, treacherous spies. Of course, everybody's a comical one-note stereotype (especially the Scots!) rather than real people. Gambling is portrayed as a heroic endeavor.
	Commercialism Fancy motorcars on display, with the Lotus Formula Three getting a real salute. The James Bond franchise, at the time this movie was made, was already a commercial industry, with novels, toys, clothes ... even 007 deodorant. You can imagine what it's been like since.
	Drug/Alcohol/Tobacco Social drinking, with a whole household rendered unconscious from (drugged?) whiskey. One character has a "trip" after his cocktail is drugged. Another character is called a junkie. The villainous LeChiffre puffs a cigar.