Perfect cast and a good story

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There were so many spy spoofs in the 1960's that I think people don't get how fresh and original this spy spoof was in 1958.The great French comedian and Bob Hope play off of each other wonderfully. It is amazing because neither spoke the other's language. Both have to resort to slapstick and pantomime. The first scene where they meet and Fernandel stares at Bob Hope's large nose and calls it "extraordinaire, formidable, and fantastique". As a bonus, we get to see Anita Ekberg in a pre-La Dolce Vita role. She plays the femme fatale and steals every scene that she is in. A brief appearance by Preston Sturges is also a highlight.I think a lot of people don't like the swift movement between sophisticated comedy and slap-stick. However I enjoyed the mixture. The hanging from a helicopter ending reminds one of many silent screen Keystone Cops crazy endings. I'm a fan of silent films, so I enjoyed it as an homage, but I can understand people dismissing it as weak and derivative.

It is unintended irony, I suspect, that the plot of this movie - what little there is of it - centers around Bob Hunter's (Hope) efforts to find a script. This movie could certainly have used a better one. Hope and especially Fernandel were great comedians, but they have virtually nothing to work with here, so the movie drags from one uninteresting scene to the next.How a picture executive could have believed that anyone would pay money to see this, much less, after having seen it, tell anyone else to see it, I can't imagine. It really is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time.

I guess Bob Hope figured it out by the time of the Keystone Cop-like finale, hanging from an aerial trapeze suspended from a runaway helicopter. He uttered a similar line near the end of "My Favorite Spy" in another slapdash ending. Hope's partner in crime here is French comedian actor Fernandel, his named shortened by a letter to Fernydel for no apparent reason I can think of, other than it sounding a bit funnier. Hope's character runs to type, that of a somewhat cowardly leading man with an eye for the babes but unsure of himself when the heat really gets poured on, a la his first meeting with Anita Ekberg on board the cruise ship.The plot of the story was probably more complicated than it had to be. It would have been enough that the villains were attempting to steal a famed writer's new script for a movie, but the story was based on a massive counterfeit scheme that might have ruined the entire European economy. In a sample of art imitating life, Preston Sturges makes a brief appearance as that writer, probably wondering how he got himself into this vehicle.Not that the film is that bad, if viewed as a random sample of Bob Hope's filmography, it's readily passable. However he did far better films, notably the Road series with Crosby and Lamour. The Hope-Fernandel team up didn't seem to be an inspired combination, as virtually all of the Frenchman's lines were in his own language. His delivery of English slang in the courtroom setting could have been one of the snappier scenes instead of merely adequate. Still, there were a few bits of genuinely funny moments like Bob's hijacking of a pigeon, and Fernandel's shipboard 'sick' routine to free up the lounge chairs. A little over the top to be sure but it worked.I probably should mention Martha Hyer's reserved but graceful portrayal of State Department employee Ann McCall who Bob proceeds to romance. After a rocky start they manage to become a serious couple, although I never really caught the point where that relationship turned for the better. Anita Ekberg appears as a mysterious spy and gets a lot of obvious profile time in the picture, and just as with Miss Hyer, her character shifts course near the end of the picture for no apparent reason.

Though this is not a good film for Bob Hope, it has one redeeming feature. It gave American audiences exposure to the great French comedian, Fernandel. Fernandel almost was given the role of Passepartout the French valet to David Niven in Around the World in 80 Days. In fact he was going to learn English for the role. It fell through and the part was played by Cantinflas whose style was similar to Fernandel. Too bad for Fernandel that Around the World in 80 Days didn't work out for him.Because Fernandel didn't speak English that presented problems trying to team him with Bob Hope. It was handled rather clumsily, Fernandel's part in the film was completely superfluous to the plot.Nothing extraordinary about the plot itself. Hope's an American actor in Paris who comes across a nasty gang and he agrees to help both American and French authorities to capture them. Along for female decoration are Anita Ekberg and Martha Hyer. It's a Bob Hope movie, not one of his best, so I'm sure you can figure out the plot from here on in.Fernandel has a few good moments though. There is a scene where he's trying to get in an insane asylum to rescue Hope and he's trying to convince the guard in front that he's crazy. So a certain amount of craziness follows and he's outstanding.His biography here says he worked in a bank when he was young. But that long horse-face of his made people laugh, so to use an American expression, Fernandel took a lemon and made lemonade. If they're going to laugh, I'll get paid for it.I wish some of his films were available here in the USA. I could easily even in this film see why he was such a national treasure in France.