Directed by Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath and Robert Parrish. An excessive inspired mess (like so many of my favorite movies). James Bond was a 1960s cultural fad on par with The Beatles so a big budget parody was a natural. The wild thing is that the producers acquired the rights to Casino Royale, so they were able to do a James Bond parody that was actually a James Bond movie! That has to be a first… buying the property you want to parody.In excessive 1960s style they got zillions of stars and writers (including Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Ben Hecht, and Terry Southern) and in this case, five directors. With all that talent and a budget bigger than a real Bond movie the parody ended up being as lavish as the real thing. Why get a fake Bond girl when you can just hire Ursula Andress? Why chose between Sellers and Allen? Hire them both! Why not… it's 137 minutes long.
Ironically, half of AUSTIN POWERS is more derivative of CASINO ROYALE than of the real Bond movies. Spectacular 1960s style, particularly the Sellers-Andress tryst while Dusty Springfield sings "The Look of Love" (the song redone for AUSTIN POWERS, proving the previous point)
The Burt Bacharach score is the best part of the movie. (Over time I think I've listened to the soundtrack CD more than any other album because it never seems to get stale.)
Orson Welles as the villainous Le Chiffre delivers his most entertaining performance in a film he didn't direct. David Niven plays the original Bond, Barbara Bouchet is Miss Moneypenny, and Jacqueline Bisset is memorably beautiful as Miss Goodthighs. Despite competing with Bouchet and Bisset, Joanna Pettet STEALS THE SHOW as James Bond's love child with Mata Hari… funny, sexy and utterly lovable as a mod superspy with a pragmatic British lower-middle class sensibility. What happened to her? She should have been the biggest female star of the 1970s. With William Holden, Charles Boyer, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Terence Cooper, Daliah Lavi, Deborah Kerr, John Huston… to many stars to name.
Super widescreen 2.35 : 1 • 5.1 surround • Val Guest making of featurette • as an odd bonus, includes the original (serious) TV Casino Royale production • English with available Spanish dubbing and French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles
