Some movies are so supremely silly that they are worth experiencing once just for their sheer giddiness. Such is the case with this 1964 extravaganza, the kind of overdone product that brought many of the major studios to their knees in the sixties. At the time, Shirley MacLaine was a top big screen draw, having graduated from her earlier pixyish waifs. She portrays Louisa May Foster Hopper Flint Anderson Benson, a four times-married, four-times-widowed woman who became exponentially wealthier with each marriage. But instead of playing the black widow angle, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, most famous as songwriters but also for their scripts for classic MGM musicals like "Singin' in the Rain", manage an inordinate, bumptious mix of black comedy and slapstick in having Louisa tell her story as a flashback to a psychiatrist who inevitably falls in love with her.
The mastodon-sized movie is really just a one-joke premise translated into four different episodes that lead to the same tragicomic end. Dick Van Dyke plays Thoreau-loving idler Edgar Hopper, who becomes an unbearable workaholic turning his failing little store into a Wal-Mart-level conglomerate. Paul Newman plays brooding, impoverished expatriate artist Larry Flint, who invents a wacky machine that paints big canvases to music and then becomes the toast of Paris with his modern paintings. Robert Mitchum plays maple syrup tycoon Rod Anderson, already a multi-millionaire when he meets Louisa but wanting the simple life down on the farm. Gene Kelly plays third-rate entertainer Pinky Benson, who changes his nightclub act and changes into a megalomaniacal movie star. In each marriage, it is Louise who ironically triggers her husband's success and finds out over and over that money does not bring happiness. In the bookend part, Dean Martin plays the one that got away, the smug hometown playboy at the beginning and the beaten man near the end. A tireless MacLaine is game throughout, but her character's innate why-me innocence becomes increasingly exasperating.
In what amounts to be the movie's most clever parts, each marriage includes a mini-homage to a particular film genre - silent comedy with Edgar, sexy French films with Larry, elaborate mega-productions with Rod and of course, MGM musicals with Pinky. The Mitchum and Newman chapters are the most entertaining since both tweak their respective images sportingly. The Kelly segment is highlighted by a terrific shipboard musical number in which the leggy MacLaine gets to showcase her Broadway-trained dancing abilities next to the nimble Kelly. Lacking the finesse for this type of farce, J. Lee Thompson directs the proceedings with the subtlety of an army commando, not a surprise given that his biggest success was "The Guns of Navarone". And worse of all, it simply goes on and on. The legendary Edith Head must have had a field day designing MacLaine's series of elaborate costumes. It's definitely a curio from a bygone era.
The mastodon-sized movie is really just a one-joke premise translated into four different episodes that lead to the same tragicomic end. Dick Van Dyke plays Thoreau-loving idler Edgar Hopper, who becomes an unbearable workaholic turning his failing little store into a Wal-Mart-level conglomerate. Paul Newman plays brooding, impoverished expatriate artist Larry Flint, who invents a wacky machine that paints big canvases to music and then becomes the toast of Paris with his modern paintings. Robert Mitchum plays maple syrup tycoon Rod Anderson, already a multi-millionaire when he meets Louisa but wanting the simple life down on the farm. Gene Kelly plays third-rate entertainer Pinky Benson, who changes his nightclub act and changes into a megalomaniacal movie star. In each marriage, it is Louise who ironically triggers her husband's success and finds out over and over that money does not bring happiness. In the bookend part, Dean Martin plays the one that got away, the smug hometown playboy at the beginning and the beaten man near the end. A tireless MacLaine is game throughout, but her character's innate why-me innocence becomes increasingly exasperating.
In what amounts to be the movie's most clever parts, each marriage includes a mini-homage to a particular film genre - silent comedy with Edgar, sexy French films with Larry, elaborate mega-productions with Rod and of course, MGM musicals with Pinky. The Mitchum and Newman chapters are the most entertaining since both tweak their respective images sportingly. The Kelly segment is highlighted by a terrific shipboard musical number in which the leggy MacLaine gets to showcase her Broadway-trained dancing abilities next to the nimble Kelly. Lacking the finesse for this type of farce, J. Lee Thompson directs the proceedings with the subtlety of an army commando, not a surprise given that his biggest success was "The Guns of Navarone". And worse of all, it simply goes on and on. The legendary Edith Head must have had a field day designing MacLaine's series of elaborate costumes. It's definitely a curio from a bygone era.