Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely brilliant

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

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

Even if it wasn't the more commonplace old Bond Memories of the 1960s, the 1967 Casino Royale did bring on some fond memories of the groovy side of the 1960s. The wild idea of so many writers and directors time-slicing the film into a hilarious smorgasbord was more for those with an acquired taste for Out-Of-The-Box ludicrousness, than many traditional Fleming fans might care for. Hey,It's not Sydney Reilly, It's a comic knockoff of an Agent(s) of some MI6 Libertine squad. So Toke up; raises your mug, drink to the men who protect you and I. And while you're at it, LAUGH, AND LAUGH MORE OFTEN.

A schizophrenic Bond experience. In this take on Bond everyone is Bond, but this leads to multiple leads competing for screen time and underdeveloped villains. The plot is as hard to follow as the master spy is elusive and the jokes are easy to miss when one has to keep asking "how did we get here?"This film is worth watching for the riotous fun found in the last third of the film and sprinkled throughout the rest. Also making it worthwhile are the incredible sets ranging from a Scottish Lord's Gaudy Manor, to the classic bond villain hideout, even an entire spy school set in a German expressionism nightmare house.The Bonds all attempt to be icy cool with varying degrees of success, and although they all brought their own gags good enough to justify their inclusion, it was the indecisive, meandering following of the handful of agents that made the movie so boring. Watch it for the Woody Allen and Orson Welles scenes, for the climax, and for the Bond Girls, but don't watch it for a coherent story. Could have been better with a half hour trimmed off.

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.

There was little that was duller than a Sunday in late 80s rural southwest England. And being at a boarding school from Monday to Saturday meant Sunday was my only free day - bookended by church in the morning, the Top 40 on the radio in the evening, and not much to do in-between. The video shop was far away, and the Arnie and Sly films that my schoolmates raved about were most definitely banned by my mother. Bond films were permitted though, and until the next film would get an airing on TV, I took to the films and TV shows from the 1960s that trailed on 007's success. The mapcap psychedelia displayed in the Flint and Matt Helm films was a colourful zany antidote to the greyness of the current era, and to the perplexed reaction of my 80s fixated classmates, I developed a real hunger for that specific genre. As it turned out, these films tended to be a Sunday afternoon TV staple, and became the colourful highlight to my weekend.Casino Royale has been viewed negatively by critics - incoherent, chaotic, indulgent, and worst of all, an unfunny comedy. It was certainly more enjoyable as a 12 year old than it is now. Much of the humour seems to stem from the older generation trying to lampoon Bond and the swinging mid-60s counterculture, whilst not really understanding their targets and subsequently coming out somewhat fusty and out of touch. As for the plot, there really doesn't appear to be one - with 6 directors working on the film, the story has no flow or point, and the film is best considered instead as a series of sketches.So why my 6 out of 10? The film still looks as great as is did when I first watched it, and is a real monument to the bigger-is-better creativity of mid-60s. My personal favourites are the darkly psychedelic scenes in East Berlin, the hugely stylish villain's lair at the end of the film, and especially the seductive meeting of Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress, soundtracked by Dusty Springfield's 'The Look Of Love', which stands out simply as a piece of 60s cinematic genius. It is a scene that certainly left 12 year old me frustrated that I had not been born a few decades earlier; I'd have the chance to be a dapper playboy when I'd be older, but not in such fine style. As I grew older I moved on from worshipping the 1960s, and it became clear to me that for 99% of the population, that decade was probably even more drab than the 1980s. But there is a 12 year old me still there that feels joy at catching zany old swinging films from the 60s, and whilst Casino Royale certainly did not represent the youthful, modish zeitgeist of the mid-1960s, it is a stunning display of that era's 'sky's the limit' visual flair and creativity, and for 60s aficionados, it's absolutely worth sitting through the poor jokes.