What attracted me to "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" was seeing Woody Allen working in re-dubbing a foreign film making into a new one. This technique is familiar to me thankful to a 30 minute show who lasted for a short period on MTV and it was really something seeing a unknown film being dubbed for comical purposes and ridiculous scenarios.
Allen makes of the "serious" Japanese film called "International Secret Police: Key of Keys" a funny but somewhat tedious and a times uninteresting film where the hero has to go to a lot of trouble to get an special egg salad recipe. Just like many spy flicks this one is very difficult to follow (there's a moment when Woody is asked by a host to explain the film to the viewers to which he replies "No" and the film goes on). This Bond adventure type has some hilarious funny sequences, some good dialogs ,a little bit of action and many histrionic moments where the characters keep making impersonations of Peter Lorre and other classic actors.
Quotes like the one in this review title or things like "I'm dying, call my rabbi!" and many others are really funny but the movie doesn't know how to be more hysterical, more interesting. There some slow parts and some jokes that doesn't work nowadays. But Allen had a lot of comical touch to make it a nice film, pretty decent and that can make you laugh at least in one scene. Yeah, the plot is ridiculous but it works well, it's well handled.
One of the greatest things "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" features is musical numbers by The Lovin' Spoonful which was included behind Allen's back when the studio felt a need to bump up the running time. Their appearance and the score was really cool, highly funny even though it doesn't have much connection with the plot or anything.
Inventive, a little bit original for its time and even more effective than many cheap comedies of the past ten years, this is a good example of Woody Allen many talents as a writer and director and deserves to be seen at least once. Just don't expect the high flies of intellectualism of his future works and you'll find some fun in here. 7/10
Allen makes of the "serious" Japanese film called "International Secret Police: Key of Keys" a funny but somewhat tedious and a times uninteresting film where the hero has to go to a lot of trouble to get an special egg salad recipe. Just like many spy flicks this one is very difficult to follow (there's a moment when Woody is asked by a host to explain the film to the viewers to which he replies "No" and the film goes on). This Bond adventure type has some hilarious funny sequences, some good dialogs ,a little bit of action and many histrionic moments where the characters keep making impersonations of Peter Lorre and other classic actors.
Quotes like the one in this review title or things like "I'm dying, call my rabbi!" and many others are really funny but the movie doesn't know how to be more hysterical, more interesting. There some slow parts and some jokes that doesn't work nowadays. But Allen had a lot of comical touch to make it a nice film, pretty decent and that can make you laugh at least in one scene. Yeah, the plot is ridiculous but it works well, it's well handled.
One of the greatest things "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" features is musical numbers by The Lovin' Spoonful which was included behind Allen's back when the studio felt a need to bump up the running time. Their appearance and the score was really cool, highly funny even though it doesn't have much connection with the plot or anything.
Inventive, a little bit original for its time and even more effective than many cheap comedies of the past ten years, this is a good example of Woody Allen many talents as a writer and director and deserves to be seen at least once. Just don't expect the high flies of intellectualism of his future works and you'll find some fun in here. 7/10