Casino RoyaleMovie Reviews

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Avg. Critic Score: 81 out of 100 Universal acclaim Metascore^® based on all critic reviews

Information for Parents:

Iffy for 13+

Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

100

San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle
Casino Royale is fresh, actually fresh. Read full review
100

Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman
Relaunches the series by doing something I wouldn't have thought possible: It turns Bond into a human being again -- a gruffly charming yet volatile chap who may be the swank king stud of the Western world, but who still has room for rage, fear, vulnerability, love. Read full review
100

Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert
This movie is NEW from the get-go. It could be your first Bond. In fact, it was the first Bond; it was Ian Fleming's first 007 novel, and he was still discovering who the character was. Read full review
88

Rolling Stone | Peter Travers
Craig gives us James Bond in the fascinating act of inventing himself. This you do not want to miss. Read full review
80

The Hollywood Reporter | Kirk Honeycutt
What a relief to escape the series' increasing bondage to high-tech gimmicks in favor of intrigue and suspense featuring richly nuanced characters and women who think the body's sexiest organ is the brain. Read full review
80

The New York Times | Manohla Dargis
The latest James Bond vehicle -- call him Bond, Bond 6.0 -- finds the British spy leaner, meaner and a whole lot darker. Read full review
80

Washington Post | Stephen Hunter
Turns out to be cracking good entertainment, as well as a fresh start for the perdurable 21-picture franchise. Read full review
80

Variety | Todd McCarthy
Craig comes closer to the author's original conception of this exceptionally long-lived male fantasy figure than anyone since early Sean Connery. Read full review
75

USA Today | Claudia Puig
The film is about a half hour too long. The third act drags and an extended high-stakes poker game doesn't always keep our attention. But this is a superior Bond. Read full review
70

Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan
Though the film's final break-the-bank action sequence in Venice is worth waiting for, Casino Royale's 2-hour, 24-minute running time is long enough to exhaust all but the series' biggest fans. Read full review

Metacritic link View more reviews for Casino Royale on Metacritic

Information for Parents

Common Sense Media says Iffy for 13+ Silly 007 spoof tamer than Austin Powers.

What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this is not the serious 2006 version of Casino Royale, but rather a wild, pull-out-the-stops comical put-on of the 007 films, done in 1960s "psychedelic" style. It's really a lot like the later Austin Powers spoofs, right down to the disjointed and nonsensical plotting. And, like Austin Powers, this makes much of the erotic content of the James Bond adventures, with luscious women as sex objects. Overall, though, it's at the milder end of the smut and vulgarity scale than Mike Myers' movies, and parents won't be squirming so much through it -- unless they're bored. Still, some parents might also object to the romanticization of high-stakes gambling as a way to defeat the bad guys.

Families can talk about the strange story behind this film and the many, many star actors, visual references, and celebrity gag cameos that most kids won't know -- like Jean-Claude Belmondo, George Raft, and the Berlin Wall -- that had instant audience recognition at the time. Their very appearance was meant to get a laugh. Tell kids that when they're grownups, young audiences might fail to comprehend jokes about Britney Spears or Saddam Hussein from today's comedies. Parents might also use Casino Royale to point out the difference between short-lived, topical humor and the more universal comedy of Charlie Chaplin or even Charlie Brown, that still holds up decades later.

The good stuff

Positive messages: The "original" James Bond (David Niven) is a stalwart, upright English gentleman of the aristocracy (even if he has an illegitimate daughter by his lost love), while most of the other characters are slippery, treacherous spies. Of course, everybody's a comical one-note stereotype (especially the Scots!) rather than real people. Gambling is portrayed as a heroic endeavor.

What to watch for

Violence: Slapstick brawling, falling, punching, and martial arts (including one sequence in which seductive women are rebuffed by judo-flips). Much gunfire, but rarely any blood. One character is visibly shot in the head, and another is in a phone booth that explodes. Birds are hunted with rifles. Explosions, bows and arrows, and military artillary.
Sex: Much non-clinical sexual innuendo and beautiful, scantily-clad girls. One actress is entirely nude and covered just by strategic metal restraints on a table. A few others are fleetingly glimpsed covered in gold body paint. A man and a teenage girl take a bubble bath together. Mostly the sex is all talk ("Doodle me!" a Scottish vixen says), with hallucinatory montages of female faces in ecstasy as the only action. A young woman reassures her own father than she's not a virgin.
Language: Some use of "damn." Jean-Paul Belmondo repeatedly utters a French swear word (inaccurately translated as "ouch").
Consumerism: Fancy motorcars on display, with the Lotus Formula Three getting a real salute. The James Bond franchise, at the time this movie was made, was already a commercial industry, with novels, toys, clothes ... even 007 deodorant. You can imagine what it's been like since.
Drinking, drugs and smoking: Social drinking, with a whole household rendered unconscious from (drugged?) whiskey. One character has a "trip" after his cocktail is drugged. Another character is called a junkie. The villainous LeChiffre puffs a cigar.

Common Sense Media An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.