I've seen a few of these '60s spy spoofs by now and they're really not for me; I find them so exaggerated as to be ludicrous, and the events that play out just serve to irritate me. This one's the last in a run of Dean Martin flicks in which he plays Matt Helm as an ageing, overweight lothario, running around with various incredibly glamorous female cast members (Elke Sommer, Sharon Tate, Nancy Kwan) in a bid to take down Nigel Green's criminal mastermind. Silly slapstick humour is the order of the day here, but it grows tiresome very quickly. Martin's lazy schtick was appropriate in the westerns he made with John Wayne, but here he's out of shape and out of his depth, an anachronism of his age, and the juvenile material really doesn't help.
Review of The Wrecking Crew
