I saw this movie when it was released and laughed from beginning to end. Just about all of 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' was an attempt to substitute destruction and speed for wit. 'Sex and the Single Girl' thrust everybody into vehicles and sent them racing down a California freeway with nothing to say. 'What's New, Pussycat' had the same problem, with people running frantically from room to room in a hotel, a Feydeau farce without laughs. Writers who have trouble ending absurd movies like this seem to think that a few minutes of chaotic slapstick will serve.

Too bad the movie loses steam at the end so that what should be a climactic pulling together of all the accumulated lines of narrative and jokes is, instead, just plain silly - clapping seals, parachuting Indians. Listen to the score and watch the performers squeeze the most possible laughs out of their situations. Peter Sellers trying on different costumes for Ursula Andress, including one of a gruff old general, 'There's nothing wrong with the British Ahmy - that a damned good swim won't cure.' You really can't look for logic in all of this. Orson Welles, with his fat cigar at the card table, performing magic tricks with flags and scarves amid flashing lights while everyone whistles and applauds. Such silliness abounds and at times the movie drags a bit, but there is always another joke around the corner. A British soldier who has been practicing karate chops on wooden boards comes to a stiff attention when his superior approaches and snaps a quivering Brit-style salute, knocking himself out with his own hand. It's a succession of gags, puns, and visual effects taking place in spectacularly designed settings, spoofs of German expressionism, psychedelic imagery, and all that. The five disparate directors saw to that, to the extent that the writers didn't.

It's pointless to compare 'Casino Royale' to any of the other 'straight' Bond films. Or in Fritz Perl's 'here and now', to switch hoaxes in midstream. It helps if you're able to live in Kierkegaard's unfolding moment if you want to enjoy this movie.

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