Strictly average movie

Absolutely amazing

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This funny movie is just plain fun...!!! The thirty year old Shirley McLaine is a hoot..!! Peter Ustinov has a ball with his role as the king. You should know this movie is a farce; it is not great art, but for some fun, I suggest you watch this movie. If you do watch it and like it...consider it my gift to you.

I wouldn't have thought it possible for a film with a cast like this to be so unfunny, and director J. Lee Thompson not surprisingly never made another comedy again (unless you count 'The Greek Tycoon'). It was reckless to invite comparisons with the likes of 'The Kid Brother' and 'Horse Feathers' by ending with a slapstick football match, and the lawsuit against the film brought by Notre Dame is the one authentically hilarious thing about this turkey.Peter Ustinov tearing about on his golf scooter anticipates the less amusing moments from 'The Monkees' and 'The Banana Splits' (with appropriately clunking musical accompaniment by the overrated 'Johnny' Williams); while his character is a depressing harbinger of all those comedy foreigners he would later play in lousy films over the next quarter of a century.Despite having recently scripted the greatest Clouseau film of them all, 'A Shot in the Dark' (1964), William Peter Blatty truly laid an egg with this tasteless mishmash of leering sex farce and Cold War satire published by him as a novel in 1963. His script contrives to namedrop the likes of T.S. Eliot and Christopher Marlowe but is nothing like as clever as it seems to think it is, and has something to offend everyone.Since it was produced by her own husband Steve Parker, Shirley MacLaine presumably must shoulder some of the blame of making a film so archaically politically incorrect. One of its few saving graces, however, is that it hails from the days before she began taking herself very seriously and was still quite charmingly unaffected (witness the gutsy way she belts out the absurd title song); although much of the time she bizarrely seems to be still wearing the pancake makeup she wore in 'My Geisha'.

John Goldfarb, Please Come Home is a movie that the whole family can watch and will appeal to older children until the age of 14 and adults 30 and up. Those in-between might not enjoy it as much. It is an amusing movie with little plot. The acting is good. The humor is good and old school. It is a prime time movie. However, there is little substance to the movie. Yet, there is not supposed to be any, just funny. There are a lot of good actors/actresses in the movie to make it funny and serious enough to stay funny and silly. Laughter is the best medicine, or so they say -- so enjoy this medicine for the soul. It is a crazy film. Bring plenty of popcorn and family or friends to enjoy this old school funny movie. No depth, no substance, just crazy laughter.

"John Goldfarb, Please Come Home" just might be my all-time favorite movie. I first saw it when I was about 10 and made sure to check it out whenever it ran in those pre-cable days. As a middle-ager who picked up a MAD magazine/Stan Freberg-style sense of humor at age 6 and never outgrew it, "John Goldfarb" covered all the bases- whoops, this was a football movie! The great Peter Ustinov truly carried it as the goofy, model-train-obsessed sheik, and the closing football game was Marx Bros. quality. This one's got everything a fan of pre-"Saturday Night Live" satire can ask for, plus it had Shirley MacLaine before she went into orbit. A young John Williams did the funny score (including the Notre Dame fight song played belly-dancer style). I was just the right age to appreciate the presence of sitcom regulars like Crenna and Backus (I still love "Gilligan"). I'd give anything to find "John Goldfarb" on video. And the kicker? It was written by William Peter Blatty, who scared the daylights out of us with "The Exorcist" a decade later! I prefer this Blatty, thank you. "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home"- the perfect off-the-wall movie for MAD/ Freberg/"Gilligan"/Marx fans of all ages. If you know and love this picture, you're on my A-list for life!