“You can’t shoot me! I have a very low threshold of death. My doctor says I can’t have bullets enter my body at any time.”

Justin’s rating: This movie’s plot was shaken, stirred — and blown to smithereens.

Justin’s review: Personally, I can’t see why we needed Mr. Daniel Craig to reprise the greatest 007 role ever, which was Mr. David Niven in 1967’s Casino Royale. Was it completely unnecessary to take the same source material and muck it up with fancy-pants action sequences instead of the nuanced discussions of phony Scottish ladies discussing how to properly prepare a goat for a funeral meal?

Why shell out your hard-earned bucks for only one mere James Bond when you could be feasting on an entire bevy of Bonds in Casino Royale — including Woody Allen?

Why pay through the nose for an intricate spy plot when you can have crazy, wacky nonsense shot at you with a psychedelic bazooka?

Casino Royale is probably — certainly — the most famous of the “non-official” Bond movies, and not just because it makes you question your fundamental worldview in new and disturbing ways. I won’t bore you with the legal issues involved with the rights involved with Ian Fleming’s 007 novels, as they bore me as much as filling out my insurance forms (“In case of sudden death by a rogue baboon attack, my estate will be transferred to…”). Suffice it to say that Fleming’s first novel swapped partners enough times to qualify it for an STD, and producer Charles K. Feldman ended up with the rights in the middle of the 1960s, right about the time he was dropping acid on a daily basis.

At the time, Bond was fairly popular due to a certain Mr. Sean Connery and his Scottish laconic wit. Feldman knew he couldn’t get Connery to star in his Bond pic, so he took the only other avenue available to him: to create a nonsensical Bond pseudo-spoof, hire six directors to film different segments, and cast multiple people as 007. Actually, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure he might have had other avenues available. But that acid, man, it creates tunnel vision. With numerous big stars (of the day) and an ever-ballooning budget, Casino Royale was posed to be a smash hit. It did fairly nice at the box office, but it was at a cost of being ridiculed as an agonizing spectacle forever after.

Watching this movie is like having an active, lucid dream where you can’t change anything around you, and what’s around you never has to make sense if it doesn’t want to. It can be mildly amusing, to be sure, but also pointlessly long, full of failed attempts at bizarre comedy, and disjointed in every definition of the word. I cannot fathom that the directors were in any sort of contact with each other, resulting in a movie that shifts gears and repeatedly mows over what little plot there is.

The story? Why, do I have to? Fine. Hmph. The original James Bond (David Niven) is called out of retirement because… well… I’m not sure, exactly. There’s some threat in the spy community, and that’s good enough for him. Apparently, once retired Bond passed on his namesake to the “next fella” (a nod to Connery), much like the Dread Pirate Roberts bestowed his moniker to an apprentice to keep the legend alive. So Bond goes hither and yonder, doing stuff that makes no sense to mere mortals such as you and I, and in the process ends up recruiting a number of other “James Bonds” to confuse his enemies. It must have worked, it boggled me.

As I said, the movie abruptly changes course at certain points to follow the adventures of the different James Bonds, none of whom are funny but all of whom exist in the trippy, Yellow Submarine world of the ’60s. This makes for gaudy sets, women with beehive hairdos, and directors who consider themselves avant-garde for filming actors through an aquarium. It’s a marathon in and of itself, and to cross the finish line will cost you every ounce of your flagging attention span.

Netflix, who employs a staff of such creative writers that it only produces envy in my heart, wrote this interesting little sentence on the back of my Casino Royale jacket, calling it a “wonderful, hilarious, all-star spoof of Ian Fleming’s 007 stories.” They apparently did not see the movie I witnessed, for wonderful and hilarious it was not. More like, the jacket writers merely take a glance at the DVD cover and spew out a summary so that they can take an early lunch and trade Dragonball Z cards.

Do not fall for their cunning trap, for both you and I know that what happens in the Swinging Sixties should stay in the Swinging Sixties.

Didja notice?

• What a cool opening sequence! And fancy fonts! I’m thrilled!
• James Bond can wash his intestines by hand, apparently.
• Lions like to ride on the roof of cars.
• “Joke shop spies” – I like that
• How to force James Bond back from retirement? Blow up his house with mortars.
• James Bond’s original car looks like it was made in 1889 from a steamer trunk and a locomotive
• Ack! Horrible fake Scottish accents!
• PETA does not approve of Scottish funeral dinners
• Incestual references played for comedy… okay…
• Lady Mary’s… abomindable… portrait
• That was a pointless dinner scene
• Wessle?
• Oh, wessle. I get it.
• No I don’t.
• James Bond = Girls Bugling
• Exploding wooden ducks!
• Kama Sutra black belt? They have those now?
• Scottish ladies like to speak in French
• When remote controlling a milk truck, it’s best to have toy cars in your control room doing the exact same thing
• Bond making out with Moneypenny’s daughter
• Bond, Jimmy Bond
• Moneypenny’s kissing test… yum
• Cooper, aka Coop, aka James Bond