What a neatly done job this is. Tony Randall is Rock Hunter, a minor functionary at a Madison Avenue advertising agency (this is a 1950s comedy and Mad Ave was the target of many jokes). He's about to be furloughed from his organization and then, by accident, manages to nail the outrageous Jayne Mansfield for her endorsement of the Stay-Put Lipstick account. Jayne doesn't care about the account but she wants to make her boyfriend back in Hollywood jealous so she pretends to be Randall's sex slave. An embarrassed Randall goes along with it. It all creates more ripples than Brittany Spears and Fed Ex or other couples of that ilk.
Pretty much everything works. The director, Frank Tashlin, knew his way around a comedy, having been responsible for a number of cartoons. He recognizes a good sight gag when he sees one. Watch the door open and the diminutive Tony Randall appear, back lighted, dressed in the over-sized suit of a muscle man, and wearing elevator shoes, staggering around like Frankenstein's monster.
He knows his hilarious dialog too. Randall is speaking to Mansfield's boyfriend, Bobo Branigansky, and pretending to be president of his ad agency. "Of course I'm the president -- but Miss Marlowe will be the TITULAR head of the company." Mansfield shrieks with delight, grabs Randall, and gives him an open-mouthed kiss, smothering half his face with her huge, blubbery lips. In a later scene, after having half his clothes ripped off by frenzied fans, Randall is offered a drink by the sympathetic Joan Blondell. Asked what he'd like, the morose Randall replies -- "I don't know. Make it something simple, a bottle and a straw." I don't want to give away any more of the gags, and the story isn't so convoluted that it hasn't already been limned in.
Let me add, though, that it's exceptionally well acted by everyone involved. Note, in particular, one long speech done in a single take with Henry Jones, as he explains to Tony Randall that success is nothing more than being in the right place at the right time. How dull it could have been. Yet Jones, with his passionate, dramatic, outrageous sing-song, makes it both gripping and extremely funny.
It's my understanding that the movie doesn't follow the play closely but I don't care. It has its own highly original touches. The movie is interrupted, for instance, by Randall who addresses the "TV fans in the audience" and demonstrates the failures of the luminescent orb in a way that makes us appreciate HDTV all the more. That scene couldn't have been in the play.
See it if you have the chance, even if you've seen it before. It's anodyne. It will chase the blues away.
Pretty much everything works. The director, Frank Tashlin, knew his way around a comedy, having been responsible for a number of cartoons. He recognizes a good sight gag when he sees one. Watch the door open and the diminutive Tony Randall appear, back lighted, dressed in the over-sized suit of a muscle man, and wearing elevator shoes, staggering around like Frankenstein's monster.
He knows his hilarious dialog too. Randall is speaking to Mansfield's boyfriend, Bobo Branigansky, and pretending to be president of his ad agency. "Of course I'm the president -- but Miss Marlowe will be the TITULAR head of the company." Mansfield shrieks with delight, grabs Randall, and gives him an open-mouthed kiss, smothering half his face with her huge, blubbery lips. In a later scene, after having half his clothes ripped off by frenzied fans, Randall is offered a drink by the sympathetic Joan Blondell. Asked what he'd like, the morose Randall replies -- "I don't know. Make it something simple, a bottle and a straw." I don't want to give away any more of the gags, and the story isn't so convoluted that it hasn't already been limned in.
Let me add, though, that it's exceptionally well acted by everyone involved. Note, in particular, one long speech done in a single take with Henry Jones, as he explains to Tony Randall that success is nothing more than being in the right place at the right time. How dull it could have been. Yet Jones, with his passionate, dramatic, outrageous sing-song, makes it both gripping and extremely funny.
It's my understanding that the movie doesn't follow the play closely but I don't care. It has its own highly original touches. The movie is interrupted, for instance, by Randall who addresses the "TV fans in the audience" and demonstrates the failures of the luminescent orb in a way that makes us appreciate HDTV all the more. That scene couldn't have been in the play.
See it if you have the chance, even if you've seen it before. It's anodyne. It will chase the blues away.