Casino Royummm!

Perhaps it's immature and perverted sexifying the latest James Bond flick, but we FINALLY got to see Casino Royale, the 21st James Bond movie, this weekend. Along with Casino Royale we also rented Borat and The Covenant, so maybe I'll talk about those later...

I haven't watched the last two or three James Bond movies - they just didn't look like they'd do anything for me, and I didn't care for the actors playing Bond. I admit to being skeptical about this one at first, plus I'm not really into card games, so that was a double whammy killing my interest. Even with the hot pics of Daniel Craig playing Bond. And yet I've heard nothing but good reviews of the movie, from review sites, friends, etc... So I countered Brett's wanting to rent Borat with my wanting to see this movie finally...

It was good! I have to say I don't think it was GREAT, but there could be a couple excuses for this. One, I was making a new bread recipe (yes Peter, I promise, I'll post this real soon!), and so we had to pause the movie every 45-60 minutes (and that usually involved a couple pause-start-pause sessions since nothing ever seems to be ready the FIRST time you pause). So I admit that definitely could've killed some of the fluidity of the movie for us.

Secondly, I feel like we were getting to know this particular Bond. I'm still a little uncertain how the whole Bond mythos is supposed to work now - and I know I shouldn't fixate on that, but I'm curious. Is it that someone comes along who's right for the job, so they get a new title (007) AND a new name (James Bond)? Or had there been other 007s by other names, and now James Bond comes along, and we're to just write off all the previous Bond movies and stuff from the fun multiverse that is Bond? (Uh oh, I'm crossing over into comics!)

Anyhow, as I said, we were getting to know this new bond - so far it's not the funny bond that some of the others were, and he's more stoic as well. Doesn't seem to like bantering as much as the previous ones. But he still tosses out some good lines. I dunno... I guess this was good like Superman Returns was, and I'm counting on the next installment in each movie series to be WOW! even better because we've gotten past the re-introduction of the character. (Like Batman Begins? Although that was a really good intro to the character)

We'll see...

I DO miss the fun gadgets. I'm sorry, but a defibrillator and the other medical gear in the car are NOT what I consider fun gadgets. So Q was sorely missed! Hopefully the next movie will add in some of the even-less-possible toys for James...

Moneypenny was cool in this one - I liked how she was introduced, their banter back and forth, etc. Granted, the romance and it's, uh, evolution (won't spoil anything for those who haven't seen it) sort of affects the future Bond flicks...

All in all, it was good, but not AS great as I'd expected from all the praise. I bet if they had an action scene at the end that compared to the one that started the movie, I would've had a totally different opinion!