Wednesday 22 July 2020

What A Way To Go! (1964 J Lee Thompson)

So here's what I think happened: Robert Mitchum runs into Betty Comden and Adolph Green, gets them stoned, and they come up with a one joke movie idea about a woman who keeps marrying losers, only for them to become massively successful (you notice the joke isn't funny). Then they proceed to get some other people stoned so that they will appear, including Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Gene Kelly, Dean Martin, Dick Van Dyke and a weary looking Robert Cummings. Seeing this line-up of talent, Fox throws millions of dollars at it and even change their famous ident sequence to pink (not a colour it favours, should anyone else be thinking of this trick).

Even Edith Head must have been on something to produce Shirley's 57 outfits, all of which are horrible (she looks best in a bed sheet in the French episode).

To add insult to injury, Sony Movies broadcasts the CinemaScope images shot by four time Oscar winner Leon Shamroy cropped to 16:9.

There are one of two half laughs, and MacLaine's dancing keeps up with Kelly's, but it's a lumbering, appalling disaster, which somehow has a 7 rating on IMDB, proving that either the world is nuts, or I am.





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