let me say at the outset: Dean (DINO) Martin fans will love it...DEan gets off a surprisingly nuanced and often very funny self-parody!
he has a great line when an unsuccessful songwriting team fling their best tune at him > he has been forced by a detour into a small town, where he has been manipulated to stay the night: "just what I need...another Italian love song!".
problem is that his self parody has a seriously "dark" side > he is not the wine-women-song man but a leering letch, anxious to jump on Ray Walston's wife (actually KIm Novak, the small town hottest barmaid, playing proxy - SEE THE MOVIE). what was needed was a lot of great one liners and ad-libs (it's been said Wilder was against that).
I did not particularly enjoy Walston's performance...and the black and white lighting gives him a crazed, sinister look, at times.
Felicia Farr does very well but the constraints of the storyline call for her to physically resemble her overnite replacement...it gets just a little weird.
and so...here it comes...shoulda been Curtis as the Top 40 phenom, Lemmon as the totally paranoid, jealous hubby and Monroe as the outrageously sexy lust interest. okay, that means this film should have been made in 1960-61.
some viewers may find some of the sexual stuff very disturbing..young viewers today, used to the oversexed sitcom, may find it amusing. at the time, it was considered a rather immoral exercise.
he has a great line when an unsuccessful songwriting team fling their best tune at him > he has been forced by a detour into a small town, where he has been manipulated to stay the night: "just what I need...another Italian love song!".
problem is that his self parody has a seriously "dark" side > he is not the wine-women-song man but a leering letch, anxious to jump on Ray Walston's wife (actually KIm Novak, the small town hottest barmaid, playing proxy - SEE THE MOVIE). what was needed was a lot of great one liners and ad-libs (it's been said Wilder was against that).
I did not particularly enjoy Walston's performance...and the black and white lighting gives him a crazed, sinister look, at times.
Felicia Farr does very well but the constraints of the storyline call for her to physically resemble her overnite replacement...it gets just a little weird.
and so...here it comes...shoulda been Curtis as the Top 40 phenom, Lemmon as the totally paranoid, jealous hubby and Monroe as the outrageously sexy lust interest. okay, that means this film should have been made in 1960-61.
some viewers may find some of the sexual stuff very disturbing..young viewers today, used to the oversexed sitcom, may find it amusing. at the time, it was considered a rather immoral exercise.