Sick Product of a Sick System

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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.

When you think of zany Hollywood comedies, the names of director J. Lee Thompson and screenwriter William Peter Blatty probably don't immediately come to mind. "John Goldfarb" is a with-it satire of politics, fads, football, feminism and other topical issues which audiences of 1965 preferred to be without. Richard Crenna plays a piloting spy (nicknamed "Wrong Way Goldfarb") who thinks he's bailed out over the U.S.S.R.; instead, it's an Arab country ruled by gadget-crazy nut Peter Ustinov. Meanwhile, magazine writer Shirley MacLaine (who also warbles the title song!) has infiltrated Ustinov's harem, apparently trying to get the scoop of the century (but on what, I couldn't figure out). Too many targets and sight-gags render the loosely-hinged plot irrelevant, however some of MacLaine's shrieks are good for a laugh (and she looks cute in a hot-pink two-piece). What were these talented filmmakers thinking when they hatched this rotten egg? It's just a brightly-painted doodle, but even screwball nonsense should have at least one sane person to steer the ship. The cast here is kept running back and forth, waving their arms and yelling insults, while director Thompson must've been chortling in his sleep. * from ****

I saw "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home" today hoping to see a funny Richard Crenna/Shirley Maclaine film. I was not disappointed. It was the absolute epitome of the '60s, made right in the middle of the decade. The music, done by a young "Johnny" Williams simply managed to reinforce this notion. The opening/ending theme, sung by the lead actress, had an Arabian sound to it, fitting enough. The movie takes place when it was made, in the middle of the Cold War. As it begins, a US ambassador to the nonexistent Middle East country of Fawzia (strangely similar to Saudi Arabia) has just sent the Sultan, a toy train obsessor with a golden golf cart and a harem, pigskin luggage, which just so happens to offend the Muslim. Therefore, the Americans intend to do everything they can to appease him. They didn't count on two things, though: John "Wrong Way" Goldfarb, all-American football star and U2 pilot, and Jenny Ericson, reporter for STRIFE magazine, who intends to get inside the sultan's harem and report on it. Meanwhile, Goldfarb gets lost (big surprise) and crash lands in Fawzia. There are all sorts of crazy complications involving Goldfarb, the reporter (and concubine), and the sultan's would-be football player son, who attended Notre Dame college. It all culminates in an insane football game between Notre Dame and the Fawz U team. If you miss it, you're missing something out of this world. Of course, if you deplore '60s comedies, you might wanna steer clear. Maclaine and Crenna are great together, and Ustinov as the eccentric sultan is brilliant. For all its insanity, I loved it.