Free HBO weekend film review: Casino Royale (1967)

A caveat, I've never seen the whole thing from beginning to end, but has anyone? This is a movie so unwatchable, I can't imagine anyone sitting through the whole thing. You can hear the directors say, "The imbeciles will laugh at this...speed up the film, imbeciles always like that. It's the 60s, make this scene psychedelic."

A true piece of shit for our time.

Some minor positives. It's cool to watch David Niven in a role he came very close to playing. This isn't news but Ursula Andress and Jacqueline Bissett were astonishingly beautiful.
But what is so horrible is the colossal waste of colossal talent. Orson Welles, David Niven, Woody Allen, John Huston, William Holden. Criminal!

For the talent and money they should have kept Niven as Bond, Welles as LeChiffre, and made it serious.

At no point during the making of this did they not see it for the piece of crap it was?

It brings up a good game of 'What if?' What if the rights to a James Bond novel fell in your lap somehow (Not as impossible as it sounds, the rights to Casino Royale and Thunderball have been bouncing around for decades). Whom would you cast if you were to make the film in the 60s? 70s? Today? The only rule is you can't cast someone exclusive to the Broccoli family in the decade you're making the film.

Review: Hotel Transylvania

Adam Sandler spends the whole movie playing Dracula with an Eastern European accent which is unfortunate because it's this constant reminder of Steve Carell's accent in the much better, much funnier "Despicable Me."

You sit there and start analyzing. Why was "Despicable Me" so much better? Better jokes, better characters, better plot, better pacing? Pretty much all of the above. It's distracting, you stop paying attention to the film and keep recalling better-done scenes in "Despicable Me."

I saw it with my 5-year-old son and we both sat there for 90 minutes waiting for the movie to start getting funny, and with the exception of a few chortles, it never takes off. Granted it was a Wednesday night, the theater was empty. But the jokes and pacing were leaden.

The film is a mash-up of Rankin-Bass' "Mad Monster Party," and those '60s movies about uptight dads who can't stand the thought of their daughters growing up ("The Impossible Years," with David Niven, "Take Her She's Mine," with Jimmy Stewart. Also the 70s "Super Dad," with Bob Crane, and Tony Danza's "She's Out of Control" from the 80s.).

(These movies are funny because the dad doesn't want his daughter dating hippies, and the guys she's hanging out with are squeaky clean Kurt Russell, Bruno Kirby types).

And I kept thinking about the monster jokes from "Mad Monster Party." They're pretty much the same jokes.

And if you can sum up all the many cliches in this movie in one line it would be: "He's in love and he must get to the airport!"