Tonight’s movie: Casino Royale

Let’s start out by saying that this is a James Bond movie, released in 1967. But Bond is not played here by Sean Connery, the vastly underrated George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, or Pierce Brosnan. Instead there are many agents named James Bond, although the real one is David Niven and there is a Jimmy Bond, James’ nephew, played by Woody Allen. James has a daughter, Mata Bond (the luscious Joanna Pettit), Moneypenny is here (the luscious Barbara Bouchet), a very young Jacky Bissett as Miss Goodthighs, and Ursula Andress (luscious and also the original Bond girl in Dr. No) are just some of the luscious women. Have you picked up on my vibe that this is like no other Bond film? With five directors and even more writers, Casino Royale is all over the place and at the end just gets ridiculous–I am not surprised at all that Joseph Heller is one of the writers. Peter Sellers is in here somewhere as a baccarat expert who plays one of the Bonds and takes on the original novels villain (Orson Welles as a SMERSH director). I laughed, this film has an amazing melange of ’60s and British humor, with some Woody slapdash thrown in. Robert von Dassanowsky has an interesting article, Casino Royale at 33, that gives a great deal of the history and reaction to a movie that was quite controversial at it’s release: “It’s really a courtly epic in ’60s drag, kids!” Recommended!