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fowler1

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52 reviews in total

For a guy who scaled the twin peaks of animation and feature films - a rare accomplishment in the 1950s - director/gagman Frank Tashlin has, surprisingly, few real standouts on his resume. Too often ill-served by either his material, his stars, or both at once, Tashlin's reputation rests on his cartoons (of course) and flashes of brilliance in otherwise so-so live-action movies. After all, in most civilized nations, being the director of both CINDERFELLA and THE PRIVATE NAVY OF SGT O'FARRELL constitutes a demerit if not an outright crime against humanity. Even Tashlin's better pictures, like SON OF PALEFACE and THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT, tend to be mediocrities occasionally enlivened by his outlandish visual slapstick. WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? is the glorious summit of what had to have been a frustrating career, the one time he was matched with a writer (Geo Axelrod) and cast (led by Tony Randall & Jayne Mansfield) perfectly in sync with his playfully outre satiric sensibility. The end result will make you wish lightning had struck more often like this for Tashlin; ROCK HUNTER may be the most beautifully 'opened-up' stage property in film history. It's visually clever and sumptuous, engagingly witty and breathlessly paced all at the same time. Best of all, its satiric barbs (aimed at both television and the gray-flanneled Organization Man) hit their targets consistently while never superceding the character-driven heart of the story: Randall is simply terrific here, and his wobbly tightwalk between schnook and lothario is hilarious. Add a few bonus points for the casting of the severely-underappreciated Henry Jones as Randall's fellow ad-exec, who oozes authentic 50s smuttiness and desperation from his pores in every scene he steals. Jayne's at her very best to boot, doing her trademark sex-kitten squeal with one arched, knowing eyebrow, and displaying plenty of resourceful smarts in her wised-up line readings throughout. As satisfying a comedy as emerged from the American 50s. Make sure you see the widescreen version, though: you won't want to miss a thing here. Tashlin's masterpiece, and his penance for Jerry Lewis and Phyllis Diller.

Yeah, that's a reference to the one narrative device that everyone who's seen WIZARDS retains. Saw this on its original release, well-toasted (as was the entire audience, come to think of it), but it's that years-later second viewing that really hammers home how awful WIZARDS truly is. A long narrated still-frame introduction prepares you for one sort of movie - as soon as the animation begins, we get another one entirely. It appears to be a crude retelling of WW2 recast in a ridiculous standoff of "magic vs technology" - of course the good guys, led by a lame wizard who might've resulted had Robert Crumb storyboarded the COLUMBO series, represent "magic". The Secret Weapon of the bad guys which provides all the dramatic conflict (by paralyzing the forces of Niceness into immobility during battle) turns out to be Super-8 movies of Hitler; these mixed-media segments play more like mixed-up media. By the time the ridiculously overdramatic narrator returns to wrap it up with, "At last, Hitler was dead, again...", only the very very dim could fail to Get It (and a note here to all elf-lovin' fantasy nerds: I know you hate having to face up to this, bu-u-ut....Hitler's "technology" was defeated not by "magic" and "nature" but by our own "technology": mellow-harshing buzz-killers like bullets, tanks, planes, incendiaries, the splitting of the atom, etc. Weren't very many giggling lapdancers in dental-floss lingerie at Normandy Beach, to say nothing of stogie-chewing elves, Churchill notwithstanding.) This puerility of vision - ZAP Comics trying but never actually meeting Tolkien - is dreary enough, but the animation makes it more painful still. The rotoscoping is inferior to what the Fleischers had achieved a generation earlier, and its willy-nilly insertion into the 'regular' animated segments, which resemble Nelvana on a bad day, is jarringly amateurish. There are a few saving moments of humor here ("They killed Fritz!"), but they too seem out of place. MEAN STREETS fans might want to check it out, though, as two of the voices are provided by that movie's Richard Romanus & David Proval. Too bad y'can't mute the PICTURE in this case, though. All in all, WIZARDS is a landmark in moronic, substandard jiggle animation for dopers.

It's not often I'll thank a TV network, but Turner Classic Movies deserves heartfelt praise for broadcasting the entire Fields canon this May & June. YOU'RE TELLING ME! has many, many hilarious setpieces and throwaway bits of business - but you'd expect that from William Claude. What might surprise you is his delicate touch when pathos and tenderness are called for. The scene on the train where a despondent Fields, playing struggling eccentric inventor Sam Bisbee, accidentally meets a travelling Princess and tries to talk her out of 'suicide' (she had no such plans...but HE did, in a moment of despair) nearly brought this cynic to tears. It's not the heavy drama of the scene that affects the viewer so much as Fields' flawless playing of it. Plot contrivance it may be, but the easy, simple grace he brings to his line readings - the small, almost imperceptible shadings of wistfulness and regret in his voice, facial expressions & body language - all give testimony to this brilliant comic actor's mastery of craft, and his ability to draw water from the well of his own loneliness. Don't misunderstand; this is a side-splitting comedy. Much of the comedy is purely visual; all of it is unforgettable. But NEVER short-count WC Fields, or confuse him with an impressionist's caricature. Where other clowns tried their damndest to make you laugh till it hurts, Fields knew his gift was to create a character forever set-upon and assaulted by a blithe, uncaring parade determined to pass him by - a man who hurt till all you can do is laugh. Well, you'll laugh all through this 65-minute model of timing and economy; but watching Fields trampled underfoot again, warily rising to his feet with no higher expectation than a brief, sweet respite before his next inevitable shellacking from the fates and furies, you might just get an idea of why they called him 'The Great Man'. Much obliged, TCM.

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