Sadly Over-hyped

hyped garbage

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I wouldn't have guessed that Peter O'Toole has such a talent for comedy. Under a messy appearance, the movie, which is one of my favorites, has a clever and funny script. It's one of the best comments on marriage and monogamy, and it benefits from talented actors who, above all, seem to be having fun in their roles. Their enjoyment is transmitted to the viewers, and so it is a genuinely "feel-good" movie. Part sophisticated comedy, part slapstick, "What's New Pussycat" is a wild experience only for those with a strong sense of humor. It never fails to put me in a good mood. The soundtrack is fabulous! Peter O'Toole in his gorgeous forest green jacket is unforgettable.

Peter O'Toole plays a sexually compulsive man who is irresistible to the opposite sex. He just can't seem to help himself when it comes to indulging with women, but he says he wants to be monogamous because he adores his fiancée and wants to be faithful to her. His therapist is Peter O'Toole--a guy far more screwed up than any of his patients. And, in contrast, Woody Allen plays the exact opposite of O'Toole--he's a nice guy with zero sex appeal. Throughout the film, various sexy ladies and temptations come their way--including Romy Schneider (the fiancée), Capucine and Paula Prentiss.Individual elements of "What's New Pussycat?" are very impressive but all together, they are pretty dreadful. The music is pretty catchy--but overused. Peter Sellers is at times quite funny as a totally screwed up psychiatrist. Peter O'Toole is handsome and at times likable. And, Woody Allen is a likable loser. But, when all these elements are combined in this Woody Allen script, the film just doesn't work all that well. I think there are many reasons but the main ones boil down to the film trying WAY too hard to be funny--it truly seems forced and very loud---too loud. And O'Toole, though a fine actor, isn't a particularly funny guy--and the fit with him and Sellers and Allen seems bizarre--like putting Marlon Brando in a Laurel & Hardy film! The film seems to be a product of the wacky and far from subtle 1960s--and is also very reminiscent of another Peter Sellers/Woody Allen bomb, "Casino Royale" (1967)--also a loud, glitzy 60s film that tries way, way, way too hard to be funny and sexy--and ends up being neither...and which also featured some nice music.

"What's New Pussycat?" is the world's first Woody Allen film. Although Woody didn't direct it, he wrote the script and acted in it in his big screen debut. It is a typical product of the swinging sixties, frequently being described as a sex comedy, a genre which first saw the light of day during that decade, although it is less erotic than that description might suggest. After all, the Production Code was officially still in force in 1965 (it was not finally abandoned until 1968) and the permissive society was still in its infancy, so there is a lot of talk about sex but no nudity and no explicit bedroom scenes. Even so, it is difficult to imagine a film like this being made in 1955, or even 1960.The main character is a young man named Michael James, a British-born fashion magazine editor working in Paris. Michael is a notorious womaniser, but has fallen in love with a girl named Carole with whom he wants to settle down. Although Michael and Carole are engaged, he finds that he is still irresistible to women and finds that he is unable to resist their attentions when they throw themselves at him. Michael turns to his psychiatrist Fritz Fassbender, but Fassbender proves to be no help, largely because he himself is far madder than any of his patients. There is also a sub-plot about Michael's friend Victor, who is also in love with Carole and who unsuccessfully attempts to seduce her.Rumour has it that the character of Michael was based on the love life of Warren Beatty; the title was supposedly Beatty's favourite greeting to his girlfriends. (Michael addresses every girl he meets as "pussycat"). Beatty was originally to have played the role but withdrew owing to creative differences with Woody Allen, and was replaced by Peter O'Toole. (Presumably Michael was an American in the original version of the script). When Woody appears in one of his own films he normally takes the leading role, but here he appears in a supporting one, that of Victor. Although Victor is only a secondary character, he is nevertheless a typical Woody creation, a wisecracking, angst-ridden self-doubting neurotic who is clearly the spiritual ancestor of most of the characters Woody was to play over the next few years, such as Fielding Mellish in "Bananas", Boris Grushenko in "Love and Death" and Alvy Singer in "Annie Hall".Despite this spiritual relationship, however, "What's New, Pussycat?" is not in the same class as most of the films Woody was to make over the next few years. To me Peter O'Toole never really seems really comfortable with comedy, but Woody and Peter Sellers could, at their best, be two of the greatest comic actors in cinema history. Unfortunately, neither is at their best here. Woody's performance as Victor is not too bad, if not in the same class as some of his later roles, but Sellers is here at his self-indulgent worst, assuming that a foreign accent and a silly wig are all that is needed to make his character funny. By 1965 Sellers was a major international star, having created Inspector Clouseau in "The Pink Panther" and three great characters in "Dr Strangelove", but in this film he seems to have been resting on his laurels.The female side of the cast have little to do beyond looking glamorous and portraying one-dimensional caricatures- sweet young thing (Romy Schneider), formidable battleaxe (Edra Gale), man-hungry nympho (Capucine and Ursula Andress) and suicidal depressive (Paula Prentiss).The script is not particularly funny, either. Michael- handsome, successful, self-confident- is very different from the average Woody Allen hero, and Woody does not seem to have been very inspired by the idea of writing a story centred upon him. (The main cause of Woody's dispute with Beatty was, apparently, that Woody kept rewriting the script to make Victor's part more prominent). In most of Woody's successful films he manages to combine humour with other, more serious, elements, such as philosophical explorations or analysis of human relationships. Even early films like "Bananas" and "Sleeper", sometimes regarded as "pure" comedies, contain some sharp political satire. There is nothing like that in "What's New, Pussycat?", which suffers from a defect common to a lot of sixties sex comedies- the assumption that, because references to sex are "daring" and "permissive" they must also be witty. (Clive Donner was to direct another film like this, "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush", two years later). In 1965 you could perhaps get away with an assumption like this. Forty-five years later you can't. The best thing about the film is Tom Jones' title song; the rest of it looks so dated that it should be renamed "What's Old, Pussycat?" 4/10

This is an amazing, rainbow-coloured roller-coaster of a Sixties movie, and probably the most swingingest of them all. It might be even more swinginger than Hugh Hefner's leopard-leotard underpants, baby! Very silly and aimless but at the same time extremely well acted by an incredible cast -- essentially all the famous actors of the era, and their mums, are in it. While watching this movie I thought "who is this actress who looks so much like Romy Schneider", and whaddayaknow, it is Romy Schneider. This was Woody Allen's first movie (as an actor, I mean) and he appears side by side with Peter Sellers, whom he certainly learned a few tricks from.It is sadly not a very good movie in that the direction is almost absent. Coz direction is so square baby, so yesteryear, so Disraeli's soiled underpants, you dig? This is somewhat, but not completely, compensated by the actors having a lot of fun and strutting their stuff (especially Peter O'Toole). And Paula Prentiss is drop-dead gorgeous. Those eyes, that silly beehive, that husky voice ...You have to see this as the quintessential Sixties movie. If that's your cup of tea, your bag, your bit of fluff on the side (you dig, baby?), then you'll have a lot of fun. It is the mother of Austin Powers. Ideally you should be watching this with a group of swinging friends that are tripping on your grandma's cough syrup.