When a US movie has its first premiere overseas, as this one did, YOU KNOW something's amiss with the movie and that the producers were nervous about its US premiere. Not many US movies premiere first overseas and then are shown in the US, as this one was. The IMDb indicates that this movie was first shown in the UK, then premiered in NYC the following December. The movie attempts-horribly, I might add, to spoof those goofy, beloved depression era dance movies--specifically, the ones with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Yup, there are truly awful dance sequences in this film! (Astaire would be turning in his grave!) Perhaps a better explanation would be that this is an example of a potentially "good" movie idea, but which was sunk by a bad script and horribly miscast. I can just see the producer pitching this idea: "Hey, why I've got this idea to parody the old dance movies using a card-board cut out of a Roaring Twenties flapper...I want Twiggy and Tommy Smothers for the principal roles..."
Smothers, who once upon a time was on the cutting edge of comedy, doesn't stand up well against his various co-stars. Playing a funny character in a movie is not the same as hosting a variety TV show. But that is not to completely blame the Tommy Smothers for this collosal dud: the script is vapid and lame. This movie appears to have employed a veritable "who's who" of once great '50-'60s out of work character actors, like Broderick Crawford, Jim Backus, and Maude's funny maid, Hermoine Baddeley (who, btw winds up stealing the movie with her funny expressions).
This movie, doubled billed on a 99 cent DVD, was renamed "There Goes the Neighborhood".
Smothers, who once upon a time was on the cutting edge of comedy, doesn't stand up well against his various co-stars. Playing a funny character in a movie is not the same as hosting a variety TV show. But that is not to completely blame the Tommy Smothers for this collosal dud: the script is vapid and lame. This movie appears to have employed a veritable "who's who" of once great '50-'60s out of work character actors, like Broderick Crawford, Jim Backus, and Maude's funny maid, Hermoine Baddeley (who, btw winds up stealing the movie with her funny expressions).
This movie, doubled billed on a 99 cent DVD, was renamed "There Goes the Neighborhood".