I usually check out sometime after the baccarat game, and come back for the final “madcap” scene in the casino where people who were supposed to be dead come back to life, there’s a crazy shootout, and Woody Allen blows up. Go read the Wikipedia page, as it makes more sense than the film actually does.

But much of the driving narrative is abandoned partway through, Sir James vanishes for most of the second act, and the focus shifts to Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers), a baccarat player recruited by Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress) to do battle with Le Chiffre (Orson Welles), a SMERSH agent with a penchant for magic, for some reason. The foundation of the story is decent for a spy spoof and if the film had actually kept to the damn idea, it might have been just fine. So, off Sir James goes, running into M’s hardly distraught widow (Kerr), among others. The original Sir James is actually a relatively ascetic old gentleman who doesn’t approve of all the killing and sexy-times, but finally gives in when his old boss M (Huston) is blown up. Sir James has been quietly retired while other agents use his moniker and wind up dead because they can’t resist gorgeous seductresses. The “plot” of Casino Royale, which gives a barely perceptible nod to Ian Fleming’s original novel, involves Sir James Bond (David Niven) coming out of retirement to take on the evil organization SMERSH. I’m beginning to wonder if I was in this film. Jean-Paul Belmondo, George Raft, Peter O’Toole, Geraldine Chaplin, and Jacqueline Bisset all drop by. The cast is a who’s who of 1960s Britannica, led off by Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, David Niven, and Deborah Kerr, then rounded out by Orson Welles, Charles Boyer, William Holden, Huston himself, and even-ahem-Woody Allen. It lists a whopping five directors (plus an “additional sequences” credit) that include John Huston and Robert Parrish (better known for his editing work), three “official” writers, and eight uncredited ones-which include Ben Hecht (maybe), Billy Wilder, and Terry Southern. Casino Royale opens with credits that just seem to keep going, and going, and going, which is a good benchmark for what this film will be.

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