Memorable, crazy movie

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Two years after Leave it to Beaver became the first show to look at life from a child's view, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis becomes the first sitcom to focus on a teenage perspective of life.What made Dobie Gillis stand out was Dwayne Hickman's portrayal of the title character. His clean cut, good looks attracted lots of female viewers to the show. Also, he had one of the great TV sidekick as well as one of the most offbeat, Maynard G. Krebs, played by Bob Denver.Denver, who would go on to greater success on Gilligan's Island would portray not only TV's first beatnik but also one of the first breakout sitcom characters. He wore a goatee and a sweatshirt and shuddered when anyone said the work "Work." I should also point out that Maynard's other catch phrase was "You rang?" The line was also used by Lurch the butler in The Addams Family.The show wasn't just about Dobie and Maynard. There were also Dobie's parents Herbert and Winnie, played by Frank Faylen and Florida Friebus. Winnie was a patient, understanding mom like June Cleaver and Herbert would sometimes say in the early episodes "I gotta kill that boy." Let's not forget an early TV appearance by Warren Beatty, who played Dobie's rival in the first season Milton Armitage. When Beatty left the show, he was replaced by Steve Franken, who would play one of the most popular characters on the show Chatsworth Osborne.And there were the girls. The actresses who appeared as Dobie's girlfriends would make some of their early TV appearances such as Michele Lee, Sally Kellerman and Marlo Thomas.Even though I haven't seen a lot of episodes, I did watch a few on the new Decades channel and I though it was a pretty funny sitcom. Unlike Beaver, Hickman breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience. It was an added dimension to a successful teen sitcom. And that was Dobie with a "b".

My family obtained its first TV right before the 1st episode of I Love Lucy. So I remember that sitcom well. But the two sitcoms from that era I really remember are The Burns and Allen Show, and Dobie Gillis. I'll skip George and Gracie for now, except to say that that show in some ways provided the 'techniques' that made Dobie Gillis so special, primarily the commentary (out of the action) by George, in the earlier series, and Dobie (at the feet of Rodin's The Thinker)in the later series.Dobie was special. Why? Because it dealt with the world of the American teenager. There was NO sitcom back then that did so. In fact, the teen-ager was just being delineated as someone special. Father Knows Best had Bud, and Ozzie and Harriet had Ricky and David, but no series had made its raison d'etre the American teenager. Dobie Gillis did, and beautifully so. It did so not by concentrating on the carnal appetites of young males, but by Dobie's heartfelt desire to find a heartmate. Around this character was created a world defined by Dobie's desires, that is, characters who were defined by how they might help or hinder his romantic quest.The writing to enable the realization of this quest was top-notch, creating characters who interacted logically with Dobie's single-minded campaigns. Dobie's parents, his teachers, his pal - Maynard G Krebs - all these were realized in relation to Dobie's atesteronic quest for the girl of his dreams. He wanted someone to love, not a body to bed, and in some ways we might doubt whether he actually knew about 'the birds and the bees'. What he did know about, and this is where the wisdom of the series is found, is that 'the best laid plans of mice and men {including those of ardent suitors)are oft gang agley'.I don't know of any other TV series that caught both the hope and the hopelessness of such endeavors with such marvelously comic results. It is tragic that no DVDs are available to allow us to see the richness of this early sitcom. Perhaps it is because Dobie's desires were chaste, and everyone knows that chastity is a downer, and that it is SEX that sells.

Now all you Wodehouse fans don't have a cow...Dobie is not a copy of Bertie. Bertie comes from money, Dobie's parent run a Mom-an-Pop grocery store. Bertie has a continental charm, Dobie has a corn-fed earnestness. Bertie spends all of his time running from women, Dobie spends all of his time chasing girls. Bertie has Jeeves, Dobie has Maynard G. Krebs, and I think that says it all.Though I enjoyed the series when I saw it as a kid (first run), I didn't really get much of the sweet heartache of the show until I was in high school and trying to catch the attention of my own Thalia.Thing that I loved: Episodes opening with Rodin's "The Thinker" and Dobie trying to think his way out of his current situation...Dobie addressing the camera...Maynard's reaction to the word, "Work!"Let me encourage anyone who can to get the short story collection by Max Schulman. It is a complete delight and gave me a real appreciation for how well the TV show adapted the tone and snap of the book.Shulman also wrote "Rally Round the Flag, Boys" and "The Tender Trap" both made into enjoyable movies.

Dobie Gillis may not be groundbreaking, but it is a well-crafted comic gem of a TV series. Direction is crisp, acting is excellent and the comic characters are perfection: Maynard, the clueless but lovable loser (who has been widely copied but never surpassed), Thalia, the sexy, cute gold-digger, who is smarter than anyone expects, Milton, the insufferable preppie, Zelda, the nerd, etc. And here sits Dobie--ridiculously average, being tossed between them all like a beachball, and trying to make sense of it all. Character actors Wm. Schallert and Frank Faylen shine; Beatty gives an eerily prescient glimpse into his future roles; and Dobie is the personification of the likeable schlemiel.Enchanting!