YMMV / Casino Royale (1967)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Coop's ability to resist feminine wiles has led some to speculate that he's just not interested in women, either because he's gay or asexual. Though, given that he does take a lot of training before he starts ignoring women, neither of these seems too likely.
• Awesome Music:
  • Burt Bacharach's bouncy theme is a marvelous piece of '60s kitsch, and is probably better known than the film itself. Played by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, everyone!
  • Ironically, this is the only Bond movie to date (canon or not) to have spawned two hit singles, as both the instrumental theme music and Dusty Springfield's Breakaway Pop Hit "The Look of Love" charted.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Vesper Lynd appears to be disposing of a body when Evelyn comes to her house. This is never mentioned or referred to again.
  • The UFO. Just... what?
  • Many things in the film are never mentioned again once they happen. It is all completely over the top even for a psychedelic sixties spy flick. Many scenes could be removed from the film with little or no damage to the plot. There are even some scenes that when seen together have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But somehow it fits together as a whole. You can blame this completely on the film's fascinating Troubled Production. None of the five directors listed in the credits had any contact with each other, and none were working with a complete script. Plus, Peter Sellers was originally supposed to be the star, but either quit or was fired depending on who you believe, prior to filming several important scenes, so the film was awkwardly retooled to center around David Niven instead.
• Cliché Storm: Referenced when Sir James Bond turns down the entreaties of the secret service heads of the superpowers, telling them "If I may interrupt this flow of cliché, it is now that time of day that I set apart for [playing] Debussy."
• Ending Fatigue: Starts when Evelyn Tremble and Le Chiffre are killed. The remainder of the film has to bring all the other characters together to unmask and confront the Big Bad. The resultant climax degenerates into a gigantic free-for-all fight in the casino with an "Everybody Dies" Ending played for laughs, followed by a Fluffy Cloud Heaven ending.
• Funny Moments:
  • Woody Allen as Jimmy Bond. All of it.
    Jimmy Bond: [as he's being led to a firing squad] You can't shoot me! I have a very low threshold of death. My doctor says I can't have bullets enter my body at any time.
  • The main villain's diabolical plan: to release a virus that would make all women beautiful and kill every man taller than he is. Considering Jimmy Bond is the shortest character in the whole movie, this is a dangerously lethal diabolical plan.
  • During the Mind Screw Le Chiffre imposes on Peter Sellers' Bond, Bond imagines himself marching about with Scottish bagpipers. When one of the bagpipers asks Bond if he is Richard Burton, Bond replies "No, I'm Peter O'Toole." The kicker is that the bagpiper is actually played by Peter O'Toole in a cameo. The bagpiper then answers "Then you're the finest man that ever breathed!"
• Ham and Cheese: Orson Welles and Woody Allen make the most of what they have. Some of the other actors seem to be going for this but come up short.
• Harsher in Hindsight: James Bond and all his impersonators die in an explosion. In No Time to Die, the official series actually killed Bond off the same way.
• He's Just Hiding: It's possible that the "Everybody Dies" Ending is meant to be metaphorical, or not describing an immediate trip to Heaven or Hell for everyone, but just eventually, given how Moneypenny, Mata Bond and the Detainer all had escaped from Casino Royale before the explosion (as mentioned on the imdb goofs page) but are floating on clouds in the final scene and that Coop had last been seen onscreen with potentially enough time to escape before the explosion. The fact that none of the seven there but Bond, Jimmy, and Vesper have their faces clearly shown playing harps on the clouds helps with this.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It's mentioned in the film that there have already been multiple new James Bond 007s after the original since none had the original's survival skills. It was already quite clear that Sean Connery would not play James Bond 007 anymore after the same year's You Only Live Twice, but nobody could have known the main series would go through five Bond actors altogether (it's on its sixth with Daniel Craig, who started with the official and much-better-received classic Casino Royale in 2006).
  • The plot to replace influential persons with clones under the villain's control was later done straight in the 007 game Agent Under Fire, though video games generally have more outlandish plots than the Movies.
  • Peter Sellers returned to the Bond spoof well with The Pink Panther Strikes Again with generally considered better results.
  • It turns out that James Bond has a daughter. No Time to Die also used this as a plot twist, albeit not with Moneypenny.
• Mis-blamed: Despite Eon Productions having absolutely nothing to do with this version of Casino Royale, the film's critical failure and early release led to some savaging them for its poor quality. This, along with their experiences dealing with Kevin McClory over Thunderball, permanently turned Albert R. Broccoli and his daughter Barbara off of anything Bond related that wasn't under their control, and Eon Productions eventually obtained the rights to Casino Royale in 1999. It also became their rallying motive for the long and messy legal battle with McClory that only started ebbing when he died in 2006 and ended once and for all with his estate selling the last missing Bond properties to them in 2013.
• Moment of Awesome: Out-of-retirement Sir James Bond wins a game of catch with stone cannonballs against a group of much bigger Highlanders.
• Parody Displacement: The score's cue "Bond Street" is probably better known to younger viewers as the music that plays during Stewie's "sexy parties" in the early episodes of Family Guy.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • The casino doorman and an MI5 man are both played by John Bluthal, who would later be best known for playing Frank Pickle in The Vicar of Dibley.
  • M's driver is played by John Le Mesurier, who would later be best known for playing Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army.
• So Bad, It's Good: The film is an odd example, being a shot at deliberate So Bad It's Good... that failed miserably, but thanks to its Troubled Production (the film went through six directing teams, and it shows), a cast studded with wasted talent ranging from Woody Allen to Orson Welles, an incomprehensibly muddled "plot", and a finale that completely defies description, it manages to be So Bad It's Good at being So Bad It's Good. Try wrapping your head around that.
• Squick: M claims that Bond "Lets his intestines down and washes them by hand. Something he learned during his sojourn in Tibet."
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Bond Street" (aka, the music from Stewie's sexy parties) sounds like a minor-key James Bond-style take-off on "Yakety Sax."
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Peter Sellers, because he was cast when it wasn't going to be a spoof. His performance is funny in a mostly-deadpan way, but he's not on the same wavelength as most of the rest of the cast. This is also one of the few places where you can hear his natural speaking voice.
• Unintentional Period Piece: During Cooper's AFSD training, one of the women trying to seduce him claims that every fifth child in the world is Chinese. True in 1967, but not anymore, thanks to a combination of the one-child policy and increasing growth rates in the third world.

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