Kiss Me, Stupid
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.98 You Save: $8.00 (53%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.28 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Kiss Me, Stupid
Movie Review: Best Self-Parody of All Time
Summary: 4 Stars
When this film opened it was a box office disaster because it received a "Condemned" rating from the Catholic church which meant, literally, if you were a Catholic and saw the film, you could not receive the sacraments anymore (now THAT'S a rating system!).
But, of course, the film is more than tame by today's standards (it's rated G). It is a classic bedroom farce and it may have been the inspiration for the 2 songwriters (Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beaty) in Ishtar. One of the real joys in the film is the music - both Andre Previn's wonderfully heavey-handed score AND the "songs" the two inept amateur songwriters write (all written by George & Ira Gershwin who were asked to write the worst songs they could imagine).
I don't doubt that if the film had been completed with Sellers in the Walston part that it would be a better film, but it is the film that it is and that's the film I find good enought to rank just below Wilder's best work.
The stand out performance here is by Dean Martin. To suggest that he wasn't aware that he was playing a particularly vicious send up of his lounge lizard persona is insane. He was obviously enjoying sending himself up enormously in every scene.
As far as films about "successful infidelity" go.... Wilder's other lost gem, "Avanti," with Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills, is also terrific as it deflates banal middle class 50s values.
If you mostly watch The 700 Club when not watching DVDs, maybe you won't find this to your liking. But then again, perhaps you might want to get a copy, a nice frosty bottle of decent vodka, and loosen the heck up.
Movie Review: From the President of the Dean Martin Fan Center
Summary: 4 Stars
Putting the story aside for a minute... "Kiss Me Stupid" is a great 'light-hearted' look at a time in history when Dean Martin ruled the entertainment field. He was a mega-star. It was 1964 - Dean's hit "Everybody Loves Somebody" just knocked the Beatles off the charts... His TV Variety Show was about to make it's debut, and his image of a playboy with a girl in one hand and a martini in the other that he was playing with the Rat Pack in Vegas was played to the hilt in this 126 minute movie by Oscar Winner Billy Wilder. Dean plays a spoof on himself that fits perfectly into the storyline of a super-entertainer who while traveling, meets and lusts over another man's wife. The comedy is a bit on the 'dark' side, but it's all in fun. This is not a film that is to be taken too deeply. As for music, Dean sing's "S'wonderful" and the rare unreleased great song "Sophia". Ray Walston (My Favorite Martian)is a bit strange in his role, but Kim Novak fits comfortably as the 'babe' of the plot.
Shortly after the debut of this movie, I heard Dean mention that it was a "cute little picture". I think he liked the way it turned out.
If you look hard, there are a lot of characture actors throughout the movie. It seems that some folks love this movie, while others think it was Billy Wilder's nightmare (They expect more from this Director. At the time of release, this was somewhat a taboo subject matter of 'cheating' on anothers spouse.
The DVD version is cleaner than the VHS copy and has been remastered in a sharper image and nice saturated color with less hiss transfer from the optical soundtrack.
Movie Review: a perverse little comedy
Summary: 4 Stars
Sex runs rampant throughout Billy Wilder's films. One can only wonder what they would have been like if he had continued past the sexual revolution of the late sixties. As it is, this little set piece of the swinging sixties shows a tolerance, if not sanction, of the stray, recreational encounter, while celebrating the bond of devotion. Dean Martin and Kim Novak are dead on as the swinging idol and the experienced escort, but the centerpiece of the movie is a loving couple. Ray Walston has been criticized as being too serious and energetic as the jealous husband, a part originally created for Peter Sellers just before a heart attack forced the casting change. Sellers would have added the right comic touch to keep the early jealousy scenes from getting uncomfortably realistic. But this character requires Walston's strong emotional depth to make his sudden love and protection of an imposter wife hired for the id-driven singer believable. Plus, Walston's broadway musical background doesn't hurt when he ends up singing the unfamiliar Gershwin tunes he has supposedly written and is trying to sell to the lusting Dino.
Felicia Farr has the pivotal role of the beautiful wife with a healthy enough spirit to tolerate and correct her husband's foibles, and find a way to support him by indulging in some recreational fulfilment. She is the embodiment of early sixties sophistication.
Good, not great. Better than any sex comedy you are likely to encounter any time soon.
Movie Review: Nice comedy
Summary: 4 Stars
Bearing witness to the times that this movie came out(1964), Billy Wilder, who has already made such hits as The Apartment, Irma La Douche and Some Like It Hot, made this film about a singer(Dean Martin playing a singer thinly resembling himself)who drives from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and happens to break down in a small town aptly named Climax, Nevada. The owner of the garage Barney(Cliff Osmond)along with his musical partner Orville Spooner(Ray Ralston, who replaced Peter Sellers after he suffered a heart attack),decide to capitalize on this opportunity by making Orville piss off his wife Zelda(Felicia Farr or Mrs Jack Lemmon in real life) so she could leave and get Polly the Pistol(Kim Novak),the town's waitress, top gun and prostitute to help Dean Martin out with his ahh sexual tension and keep his wife away from his lecherous ways. Well, things work out but Orville gets Polly mixed up for his wife, and when Dean Martin aptly does what men do, Orville throws him out of his house, making him go to the local bar, where his wife gets drunk and ends up in Polly's trailer sobering up. Martin goes in the trailer and ends up seducing Zelda, so all the best laid plans that these guys did went up in smoke and on top of that, Zelda wants a divorce, upsetting Orville further, but in eventuality, it all ties to an happy ending.Movie Review: Kim Novak as Professional
Summary: 4 Stars
This flick is one of a series of Billy Wilder-directed movies which trace the sexual revolution of the 60's. The Apartment, Irma La Douce, Kiss Me, Stupid, and Avanti all have female roles which were quite shocking at the time. While Shirley MacLaine is not a very convincing hooker in Irma La Douce, Kim Novak is a very attractive prostitute (and sometime waitress) in Kiss Me, Stupid. She's professional: "Get out of here," she tells Ray Walston as she is about to service Dean Martin, "I've got a job to do." She is sentimental, as some working girls are: She happily plays the part of Ray Waltson's wife for a night. She's experienced: Her voice has a husky, worldly, I-know-my-job quality that makes a customer comfortable. She steals the movie, but Felicia Farr and Dean Martin contribute credible performances to support her. Ray Walston, as Felicia Farr's ridiculously jealous husband (he suspects her of cheating with a fourteen year old boy), does his best with an absurd character, but there's nothing of his Singing in the Rain character here. Still, Kim Novak makes this a gem of a movie. Be warned, though. As the trailer says, this movie is for adults only.