User Reviews

This frothy thing is a charming movie (script by Comden and Green) and lots of fun. Shirley MacLaine is the strictly brought-up, naive cutie pie who manages unwittingly to marry a series of hopelessly poor men, each of whom becomes fabulously wealthy. We're talking big names too -- Dean Martin, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, et al -- not all of whom are associated with successful comedies.

Her first love, in their dusty little town, is the hapless Dick Van Dyke who is perfectly content to spend his time fishing and reading Thoreau, while the arrogant Dean Martin lords it over Van Dyke and everyone else. MacClaine chooses to marry Van Dyke, perhaps partly because he's so abjectly mired in poverty, just to frustrate her mother who has advised her that "money is the root of all." Van Dyke suffers a road-to-Damascus experience and builts his shabby hardware store into a monstrously successful supermarket, then drops dead from the effort, leaving MacClaine a mountain of money. The pattern holds through her subsequent marriages.

Well, I suppose Mitchum doesn't start out poor. He starts out fabulously wealthy, a Howard Hughes figure, distant and stern. But he warms to MacClaine, sells off his business enterprises and retires to a little farm with her. He celebrates his retirement with a few hayseed neighbors, gets a little drunk, and tries to milk the bull instead of the cow. "Melrose! FORGIVE ME!", he howls before being kicked for a field goal. He leaves her millions.

In some ways the funniest and most satiric episode involves Newman as a Paris taxi driver who is an insane painter filled with contempt for bourgeois morality and greed. He lives in a shabby studio apartment in which a dozen large crane-like arms with paint brushes on the ends are activated by his "sonic palette." Newman bangs drums, operates jack hammers, and makes other random noises and the brushes slap away randomly at a large canvas. The painting are worth nothing. However, MacClaine accidentally activates the brushes by playing a record of Mendelssohn's "Spring Song." Newman has an epiphany while gawking at the brushes now oscillating in harmony. He now begins to produce machine-processed painting by playing classical music and jazz. They're no longer "his" work, although he runs around in a frenzy with a conductor's baton. The value of his paintings soars. They soar even more after the machines conspire to beat him to death. I can only think of one other movie, "The Prize", in which Newman has been in the least funny, fine dramatic actor that he is. He throws himself into the role of mad artist with amazing gusto.

I guess I won't go on with this because, as must be evident, the plot has a lot of characters and is a mosaic of sub-plots. Let me add that, in some prints, in a scene in which MacClaine and Mitchum enter a ballroom in evening clothes, she does a pirouette and drops to her knees, at which point her bodice slips a little, but just enough. I only add that for the pre-verts among us. There was no joy in it for me. I've never had an impure thought.

How much you like WHAT A WAY TO GO! depends a lot on how much pleasure you'll derive from seeing Shirley MacLaine in about a hundred costumes, each more outrageous than the last. She's the whole show and that's no small feat considering her leading men. As a too-often married widow, MacLaine recounts her marriages to doctor Bob Cummings. There's sensible Dick Van Dyke, unsavory would be suitor Dean Martin, starving artist Paul Newman, wealthy industrialist Robert Mitchum and big time star "Pinky Benson," played by Gene Kelly. It's all an excuse for MacLaine to get into one wild escapade after another and it's all set against a constantly changing though always colorful background...this is the glossiest of glossy movies. It's strange because although it's not particularly funny, it's very watchable. Of the leading men, Van Dyke and Martin fare best, essentially playing variations of their established personas. Newman is at sea in this type of light farce and Mitchum makes no attempt to be funny. Kelly's segment is dreadfully peppy. He almost manages to upstage MacLaine. The great Margaret Dumont has a cameo as MacLaine's mother. Directed with a surprisingly light touch by J. Lee Thompson, who was most famous at the time for directing THE GUNS OF NAVARONE!

I could easily see how someone might either really like this movie or hate it, as it definitely is for a niche audience. When I was a kid, I saw it and loved it--as most kids would probably enjoy this movie. However, when I saw it as an adult, it only was mildly interesting and I realized just how broad and over-the-top the humor actually was. If you can enjoy this sort of unsophistication (this is NOT meant as an insult--I can enjoy some very low-brow movies if I'm in the right mood), then I advise you to give it a try. If you love Shakespeare, Truffaut, Russian art films and Niles Crane is your role model, then please don't expose yourself to this film.

The broadly played film stars Shirley MacLaine as apparently irresistible woman. That's because husband after husband keep dying accidentally (it's their own fault, really--she isn't a serial killer) in some of the funniest ways and the movie, at times, is pure slapstick. Plus, if you hate Dick Van Dyke, Gene Kelly, Robert Mitchum or Paul Newman, then at least you get to see them die in the film!

Written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and directed by J. Lee Thompson, this super production had elaborate sets, and Shirley MacLaine with six leading men, 72 gowns and 72 hairstyles—all for the purpose of stating that money is the root of all evil!

Like "A New Kind of Love," it's a pathetic pastiche of sex comedy, satire, fantasy and pretentious techniques, which support a one-joke story: a woman wants to live a simple life, but has the "misfortune" to marry men who become millionaires, and who die shortly thereafter, leaving her hopelessly wealthy…

Newman had the good fortune to appear in only a small portion of this disaster… He's the second of five husbands—an American gifted painter who drives a taxi in Paris and has invented a machine that converts sound into oil paintings…

The couple are poor and happy until MacLaine feeds classical music into the machine, resulting in a successful painting… Newman becomes rich, builds more and more machines, and gets so involved in his work (another obsessed artist!) he ignores his wife…

Newman is surprisingly amusing when he talks about art in almost a Graziano voice, and when he "conducts" his machines into a frenzy

Thirty years after being insulted by the Marx Brothers, Margaret Dumont is back in her final role as one of the most obnoxious mothers in screen history. She's so obnoxious and such a fish-wife that her husband (who never speaks a word) simply slides into the couch until he disappears. They somehow managed to squire Shirley MacLaine, and this poor girl gets the instant attention of two men: wealthy Dean Martin and hard-working but poor Dick Van Dyke. MacLaine doesn't want to marry for money no matter what the former Mrs. Flagstaff insists. "Money is the Root of All Evil", she has engraved on a pillow, but as MacLaine explains, that meant "Money is All".

The audience is first introduced to the overly dressed MacLaine as a widow escorting the coffin of her most recent dead husband down her mansion steps, and in flashback, we learn of her humble upbringings, her marriage to a poor man who became wealthy, a struggling artist who became successful, a wealthy businessman who retired to the farm to get away from her "curse", and finally a poor dancer who becomes a big movie musical star. "On Our Little Houseboat Built For Two" has MacLaine dancing for the only time with Gene Kelly, and even if you can't stand this movie, you can't help but adore the cleverness of this number which comes out of nowhere.

The other men in her life are Paul Newman (as the artist) and Robert Mitchum (as the retired businessman). This black comedy is of course, about death, and each of the men die hysterically in ways that must be seen to be believed. Obviously, this is not a film for all tastes, and some may be offended by it. MacLaine gets to wear the most outrageous of outfits throughout with hairstyles to match, giving way to her characters in later artistic flops like "Woman Times Seven" and "The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom", but also comparable to the deliciously tacky costumes and wigs for Rosalind Russell in "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet, and I'm Feeling So Sad".

This is a film which needs to be seen either on the big screen or in the DVD wide screen release. It is not meant to be seen at all in pan and scan as that looses most of the cinematic color of it and makes it a total blur. It is obvious that MacLaine and her many co-stars (which includes Robert Cummings as an amorous psychiatrist) had a ball in this. If you put aside your fear of "tacky", you too will have a great time as well.

Louisa May Foster is a modest and unassuming woman. She knows just what she wants : a little house and a happy marriage with a man who shares her liking for the simple, uncluttered life. Sadly, this inoffensive life ambition is difficult to fullfil... Poor Louisa is to encounter a succession of ever more ambitious and driven men.

Enjoyable black comedy with a fine performance by lead actress Shirley MacLaine. The movie is also notable for its stellar cast and its many references (under the form of pastiches and parodies) to other films and film genres. Poor/rich Louisa tells her life story to a psychiatrist and many of her explanations turn into pastiches : there's a "silent comedy" sequence, a "Gene Kelly musical" sequence, and so on. My personal favorite is the "Lush Budgett" sequence, where Shirley MacLaine, evolving in the world of the super-super-rich, wears ever more expensive and outlandish costumes. There's many a clever dig at movie costumes and movie costume-making here.

The main target of the movie is, of course, the dark side of the American Dream : work, work harder, pour all your energy into your work, become a captain of industry and die young of a heart attack, estranged from family and friends. As a result the movie is required viewing for all workaholics, both potential and actual.