Yesterday, I went to the cinema with Dan (who is staying in Bath for the weekend) to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale.

Dan and I are both massive James Bond fans and were highly anticipating this latest addition to the series and eager to see how the new 007, Daniel Craig would perform.

After enduring FORTY FIVE MINUTES of advertisements, the film begun. Good job too, I was becoming rather frustrated and on the verge of running down to the cinema screen and starting a protest by shouting “START THE MOVIE, START THE MOVIE!”

Anyway, I found there to be positives and negatives about this latest film…

– The film was very dark, although I am lead to believe this is reflected in Ian Fleming’s original novel. In places it reminded me of Timothy Dalton’s, Licence to Kill.

– Having watched numerous Bond films lately, Casino Royale did not seem to have the charm seen in any of the previous titles. Something was most definitely missing and CR came across as more of an action film than a classic James Bond adventure. If Ian Fleming was alive today, he would not be amused.

– There was very little of the humour, innuendos or light heartedness, commonly found in the previous Bond movies.

– There were aspects of the film which bared similarities to George Lazenby’s Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Lazenby is of course, a Bond you either love or hate. Like most true 007 fans, I hate Lazenby and OHMSS.

– The Bond girl, Eva Green was lovely. Without giving too much away, I was a little displeased with how “involved” Bond became with Green’s character. In the end, it worked out for the best though.

– At times, I thought Bond was a rather crude. He has always been a no-nonsense character, but I thought one particular line, where he asks his adversary to scratch his testicles, was going a little too far even given the context of the situation.

– Casino Royale is a very good film, but at the end of the day, it’s an action movie.

– Daniel Craig is a great actor and despite appearing in a disappointing Bond movie, has a lot of potential. I think giving the right script and production team Craig could make some real classics. Sadly though, Casino Royale is not one of these

After the film, we both went to meet Simon for Nandos. At this point, Simon did not know we had already seen the movie and was getting ready to watch it this evening with us!

As I had promised Simon I would watch it with him, I had no problem with watching the film again. Dan was a little more objective however, and broke the unfortunate news to Simon when he had a mouthful of Peri Peri chicken.

Needless too say we did not watch the Bond movie again and I was unable to use the humorous blog title I had planned of “You Only Watch Twice”. Instead, Simon and Dan came back to my flat where we drunk coffee, ate cake and watched a proper Bond film – Octopussy.

It’s just a shame that the care and love which went into producing Octopussy was missing from the latest 007 film.