Your $3 Movie Review: Casino Royale

I'm just going to assume that you know the rules going in, you know, when watching any Bond movie:

1. Check your logic at the door.


2. It's cool, and quite manly, to point guns at people.


3. Bond can withstand beatings that would kill a crash test dummy.


4. Slightly witty things sound fabulous when spoken with the right accent.

Now to this Casino Royale attempt:

Daniel Craig: Yes and no. Yes, I like the buffitude. Yes, it's quite British to poo-poo the weight room in favor of extra rolls in the hay (and in the middle), but the muscles add some much-needed eye candy.

ESPECIALLY if you have to worry about the next stiff breeze driving away the last of your Bond's hairline. Come on, there must be some hairy guys in the British Isles somewhere. The Bruce Willis/Kevin Costner hair now/gone tomorrow look is less than ideal.

Second, and a huge Craig-as-Bond issue: Drew thought Daniel Craig was giving us the Blue Steel look all night, but I realized that it is not an acting thing, it's a physical defect that is difficult to overlook: his upper lip is too long, which gives him an endless pout.

How did they overlook this? That's a deal killer in my book.

I know. How superficial of me. But hey, this is a Bond flick. That's all there is.

And how old is Daniel Craig? The plot is based on this being Bond's first outing as an MI6, but he doesn't look any younger than any of the Bonds that have gone before him. It's confusing.

The rest:

OMG, who did the make-up for Vesper, the Bond girl? Hey, if you want her to have bigger lips, you can't just color outside the lines. It just looks like a chimp put her lipstick on.

Poor Judi Dench had the job of trying to stitch up the miles of action scenes into a coherent plot. She should get some kind of an Oscar for that.

Bottom line: A good time was had by all (except maybe the couple behind us who were forced to listen to our snarky comments). Sorry.