MGM must have thought, let's throw as many genres as we can into one movie with this odd amalgam of '60s sex comedy, beach party frolic, and Irwin Allen-type disaster flick for the last 10 minutes. It's one of several misbegotten efforts at the time to revive Tony Curtis's career (he had a good one the following year, "The Boston Strangler"), and he seems dispirited and out of sync as an opportunistic nobody who gets involved through unlikely circumstances with Claudia Cardinale, Sharon Tate, and Joana Barnes while pursuing a "How to Succeed"-like climb up the corporate ladder at a swimming pool company. Maybe it's meant to be satirical; the screenplay, by Ira Wallach, is so listless and episodic it's hard to tell. Cardinale's fine, and David Draper, as Tate's boyfriend, displays not only a muscular physique but some comic timing. Guest appearances by Jim and Henny Backus, Mort Sahl, and Edgar Bergen round the thing out, and the climax, with a crowded Malibu beach house plunging down a cliff, does generate some tension. It's an odd duck, but valuable as a time capsule, and a demonstration of directorial nadir: Did Alexander Mackendrick, who made "The Ladykillers" and "The Sweet Smell of Success," really helm this?
Review of Don't Make Waves
