Movie Review #9 - Casino Royale
Dec. 19th, 2006 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catalyst2This movie is a jumbled mess - but does show that sometimes the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. Before you leap out to lynch me, I am referring to the 1967 version of Casino Royale.
First check of the watch - about fifteen minutes in, not for a while after that and then about every 30 seconds for the last ten or so minutes.
I can never decide whether this movie was parody so deep that it started to parody parodies of parodies or whether it really was just crap. Viewed as a whole, it is just disjointed, barely organised mayhem but, if you view the segments as if they are separate sketches (rather than linked scenes), many of them are funny (or, at least, some of them are moderately amusing). What does let this movie down is its inability to close itself down. If you are going to get 5 different themes to run, each with its own directors and writers, then you are going to have to do one of two things. Either wind it up mysteriously but low-key, with some unanswered questions or lose all sense of coherence and cram it full of every absurdity there is and hope people think you were being clever. Sadly option 2 was the selection they made here.
This wasn't funny, just chaotic. This wasn't smart, just pretentious. This wasn't even fun because at least fun keeps me awake!
First check of the watch - about fifteen minutes in, not for a while after that and then about every 30 seconds for the last ten or so minutes.
I can never decide whether this movie was parody so deep that it started to parody parodies of parodies or whether it really was just crap. Viewed as a whole, it is just disjointed, barely organised mayhem but, if you view the segments as if they are separate sketches (rather than linked scenes), many of them are funny (or, at least, some of them are moderately amusing). What does let this movie down is its inability to close itself down. If you are going to get 5 different themes to run, each with its own directors and writers, then you are going to have to do one of two things. Either wind it up mysteriously but low-key, with some unanswered questions or lose all sense of coherence and cram it full of every absurdity there is and hope people think you were being clever. Sadly option 2 was the selection they made here.
This wasn't funny, just chaotic. This wasn't smart, just pretentious. This wasn't even fun because at least fun keeps me awake!
