The story goes something like this: EON Productions obtained the rights to all of Ian Fleming's Bond-related works save one - his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale.  Later, producer Charles Feldman obtained the rights, hoping to make an official Bond film.  But Saltzman and Broccoli had just been forced to work with Kevin McClory on Thunderball and had no desire to co-produce again.  Feldman thus set out to make his own Bond film, but when he couldn't afford to lure Connery to the project, he opted for a spoof instead.  Now, I have no idea how much of that is true.  But what I do know is this: Casino Royale is an impressive mess.  It had five credited directors (unheard of outside of anthology films).  The first actor billed in the opening credits (Peter Sellers) either walked off the project or was fired without all his scenes finished, leading to an editing disaster near the end of the film.  Its budget spiraled out of control to the point where it actually cost more to produce than did You Only Live Twice, the official Bond film released in the same year.  It was, in general, a fiasco.  And yet, with the James Bond name attached, it still ended up making money.  That seems to be the lesson of this series, in the end - it almost doesn't matter in the slightest how good the movie is.  Adjusting for inflation, Thunderball - which I know some people seem to like but which is just awful - is the highest-grossing Bond film of all-time.  People want to see James Bond.  Quality - or in the case of Casino Royale, even coherence - is not a prerequisite.

David Niven was actually Ian Fleming's personal choice for Bond, though at 52 when the first film was made he was already a bit old.

The plot opens with M and representatives of three other major world powers (the US, USSR and France) visiting Sir James Bond (David Niven), a retired spy viewed as a legend in the field, looking for his help with a case involving a high number of dead and missing spies.  In the film's most clever (and most spoof-like) sequence, Bond derides the "sexual acrobat" to whom British intelligence assigned the name James Bond and the number 007, with M explaining that Bond's legend needed to be maintained so that MI6 would still be respected.  In another clever bit likely to escape modern audiences and possibly even many of those at the time, Bond is described as the "genius of Mafeking" and the "hero of the Ashanti uprising," both events that took place in 1900 - meaning that even this Bond is curiously ageless (it calls to mind, in predictive fashion, Judi Dench's M's labeling of Bond as "a relic of the Cold War" in 1995's Goldeneye, giving at least some hint of Bond's then-33-year screen history).  Niven himself was not born for a decade after those events and there's certainly no suggestion that he's playing a man in his mid-90s.  It's also stated that Bond retired out of guilt for having lured his lover Mata Hari to her execution - that was in 1917, 50 years before this film's release.  For some reason, Niven opts to play Bond with a stammer, which at first I thought might pay off somehow, but it never really does aside from a quick joke later in the film that hardly seems worth it.

Unable to lure Bond out of retirement, M orders Bond's estate destroyed, but perishes himself in the carnage (although this is not seen).  With the news that Bond is back, SMERSH head Dr. Noah orders his henchwomen to get to work on destroying Bond's "celibate image."  This starts with a long, not particularly interesting sequence in which "Agent Mimi" (Deborah Kerr) impersonates M's widow and various SMERSH agents impersonate his daughters, all attempting to seduce Bond.  They all fail, with Bond's physical prowess eventually having the effect of causing Agent Mimi to fall in love with him instead and reveal the plan to him.  Bond's values impress upon her so fully that she joins a convent.  This whole sequence takes more than 20 minutes and really has almost nothing to do with anything else in the movie.  From there it's off to a car chase in which SMERSH simply attempts to blow up Bond, but fails to do so.  This also starts the film's love affair with scenes that more or less could have been pulled from a regular Bond movie, except instead of the dramatic James Bond theme, it's Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass playing something goofy.  Apparently that's what passes for a spoof.

"Mahaaaaa, the French..."

In a brief return to what actually made the film clever, Bond returns to MI6 and is brought up to speed on the issue: various agents have been killed while involved in sexual activities across the globe.  Clearly the idea that Bond would be a better agent if he could keep his pants on was popular even at the time.  "It's depressing that the word secret agent has become synonymous with sex maniac," Bond says.  In another poke at what might be termed over-charisma on the part of Connery, the new Bond has been taken off the list of agents because he's "now doing television."  Bond sets Moneypenny (Barbara Bouchet) to the task of finding a man attractive enough to lure female agents who can then be trained to resist any woman.  She finds Cooper (Terence Cooper), who is then assigned the name of James Bond 007, as Bond states that all agents will be, to confuse the enemy.

This subplot then goes completely away, as Bond heads off to find Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress), a former agent and current businesswoman.  Lynd is assigned to recruit Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers), a baccarat expert.  After a bizarre sequence that involves Tremble trying on various costumes, seemingly added just to allow Sellers to perform various impersonations (the reason he got famous in the first place), Lynd tells Tremble that he is to go to Casino Royale and play baccarat against Le Chiffre (Orson Welles), and to do so under the name James Bond.

Uh... too soon?

Meanwhile, Bond goes to southeast Asia to find his daughter with Mata Hari, Mata Bond, whom he hopes to use as a spy to infiltrate a SMERSH cover operation in Germany (and who definitely is not 50 years old).  We spend the next 20 minutes on this plot, which again has very little to do with anything except insofar as it allows Joanna Pettet to run around in sexy costume.  Mata does discover that Le Chiffre is hoping to raise money by selling incriminating photos of military officers, but steals the negatives to prevent him doing so.  This means that Le Chiffre has to win big at baccarat to pay back the money he has embezzled from SMERSH, in a plot that actually comes right out of the original book.

For the next few sequences, the film is actually quite close to being a straight Bond film.  Tremble is seduced and drugged by SMERSH agent Ms. Goodthighs (a young Jacqueline Bisset); while he's drugged, a curious dream sequence plays with a song over it that includes the lyric "He's not really such a wonderful spy, but winning lots of money and a gal, he's a fabulous guy!"  This is arguably the spoofiest moment of the movie (is that a word?), but it's quickly past and then we're off to the casino, where, aside from Orson Welles doing magic tricks and Sellers being a bit more comedic than a regular Bond, it's extremely close to the plot of the novel.  Tremble loses at first, but after getting his credit extended is able to win when Le Chiffre hits baccarat.  (The celebrated Tremble method appears to be "Have so much money in hand you can sit on mediocre deals until the other guy busts.")

"Bond.  Nerd Bond."

As in the novel, Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper and Bond, or in this case Tremble, gives chase.  It's at this point that Sellers' exit from the film becomes painfully clear.  The film cuts from Tremble jumping into a car to chase Le Chiffre to a scene in which Tremble has already been captured.  Next comes a sequence of several minutes in which Le Chiffre "psychologically tortures" Tremble, or as I like to call it, "the filmmakers decided to try out some new visual effects they'd heard about."  Following this, we come to a scene in which Sellers, now in highland dress, is surrounded by a highland marching band which includes a thoroughly random and confusing Peter O'Toole cameo.  Vesper shows up and guns down the band to save Tremble, but then guns him down seconds later, saying, "Never trust a rich spy."  In such a way is Sellers written out of the film.  It really could not be more awkward.  As in the novel, SMERSH bump off Le Chiffre as well as punishment for his loss.

I say, look what we can do!

We return to London, where SMERSH kidnaps Mata via a giant spaceship.  Agent Mimi, now a nun, returns to inform Bond that Mata is being taken to Casino Royale.  Once there, Bond finds out that Dr. Noah is actually his nephew Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen), seen briefly as an incompetent agent earlier in the film.  Noah's plan involves releasing a bacterium that will make all women beautiful and destroy any man over 4'6", leaving himself as the biggest man on the planet.  After Bond is taken away, Noah goes to another room where he's keeping "the secret weapon," MI6's most attractive female agent (who hasn't been seen since the Cooper sequence, way back in the past).  This sequence provides another clever bit - the idea that Bond villains with plans of world domination are really just neurotics who feel inadequate - but it's pretty much the last.  Noah is tricked into taking his own "atomic bomb pill," and runs off crying for an Alka-Seltzer.  Meanwhile, Bond, Moneypenny, Mata and Cooper are trying to escape a room that we never saw them go into in the first place (and when did Cooper show up again?).  They make it back to the casino, where Vesper prevents Bond from leaving.  Just then, Cooper runs in to announce that the Americans have arrived - cut to stock footage of the cavalry riding in.

The final five minutes of the film are set to the typical zany music, with cowboys on horseback riding around, guns going off everywhere, pointless cameos by George Raft and Jean-Paul Belmondo (who were billed in the opening titles in spite of their seconds-long appearances in the last couple minutes only), seals fighting each other, a chimp, a flying roulette wheel, a Keystone Kops scene, an American Indian dance number, and Dr. Noah staggering around coughing until, finally, the bomb goes off and the casino is destroyed.  Cut to, yes, this final scene:

You know a film is probably scattershot when it opts to end by blowing its characters to smithereens and then showing them in heaven.

If you're looking for a Bond spoof, the place to go is the original Austin Powers.  That film clearly owes at least as much debt to Casino Royale as it does to Connery's Bond films, with a few differences - its spoof tactics are much clearer, it's funnier (even allowing for the fact that I wouldn't get many of the 1967 references, there's little terribly uproarious about this film), and it's certainly much more coherent.  As I noted earlier, Casino Royale had five directors, and that fact alone is enough to give one pause, but believe me when I say that the film looks like it had five directors, and that's really the problem.  (In fact, IMDB suggests that there was even a sixth uncredited director responsible for the chaotic final scene in the casino, which would make perfect sense.)  Its spiraling budget is also no surprise, with clearly expensive sets (especially in the final sequence inside SMERSH headquarters) and explosions galore, perhaps more than had even appeared in a real Bond movie up to that point.  It's interesting at times, if not exactly fun - the basic premise behind the film, Bond dealing with his own recognizability by sending out various agents with his name, is fairly clever.  The problem, it seems, is that the movie was initially built around Peter Sellers - when he departed the movie, or was fired for being too difficult, it was too late to start over.  Thus we end up with extended sequences that go nowhere like Bond at M's castle and Mata in Berlin, giving us a minute's worth of useful information in twenty minutes of screentime - the sawdust in the meatloaf, as it were.  Val Guest, the fifth director, had the thankless task of stitching the movie together so that it would make some degree of sense.  Close... but no cigar.

The most impressive thing about Casino Royale is that in spite of all the money and talent behind it, not to mention the reasonably clever ideas hiding in the spoof, it winds up being a complete disaster that's pretty much impossible to watch more than once.  Not only that, it winds up making Thunderball - the last official Bond film released prior to the making of this film, and which you know I hated - look good by comparison.  Oof.  With this behind me, can the Roger Moore films - not supposedly Bond's high point - possibly do worse?

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