Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

TheLittleSongbird 'The Glass Bottom Boat' was seen as part of my completest quest for the films of Doris Day. Most of her films have been seen already, a few many times and among my favourites, but being a fan there was the want to see the ones not already viewed.Of these first time viewings, 'The Glass Bottom Boat' is one of the better ones. Not quite one of her best ('Calamity Jane' and 'Pillow Talk' are especially great), but a long way from being one of her worst, even as a fan will admit that not every single film of hers is good let alone great (both early in her career and later), and actually one of her better later (meaning her 60s output) films. Also the better of the two Day and director Frank Tashlin collaborations, the other being the critical and commercial failure 'Caprice'.Sure the story is silly, but the film knows it and one is just too caught up in the non-stop entertainment to care. There maybe could have been more of the romance between Day and Rod Taylor, there certainly is some, it has the right amount of sweetness and Taylor has charm as a leading man if not quite enjoying himself as much as the rest of the cast, but it is a little under-utilised and occasionally gets lost amidst everything else.However, 'The Glass Bottom Boat's' production values are great, one of Day's best looking films to me. The locations and fashions are fabulously lavish and it is beautifully photographed with gorgeous use of colour, bright, bold and rich. There is some fine music too, energetically quirky while also lush. The title song is unforgettable, the little snippet of "Que Serra" is even better used than in 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' and "Soft as a Starlight" is lovely. They suit Day's beautiful voice perfectly, and Day's musical understanding and sincerity shines through all.It's an exceptionally funny film too, which is something not always found in later films with Day. Very slapstick-heavy which is delivered with tons of energy and like the supporting cast in particular were having a ball, but also with some intriguing social satire, some ahead of the time use of technology (would do anything for a kitchen like that, despite being more than content with the kitchen in my flat, but the kitchen is just too cool). The title sequence is super.Story goes at a bright and breezy pace, 'The Glass Bottom Boat' is a never dull film, and has charm and fun aplenty, the silliness and slightness of it is pretty much forgiven. Tashlin's experience as a cartoonist comes through loud and clear with the delivery of the humour and he keeps things thick and fast with the gags and zany dialogue being packed into the film without feeling too much. The ending section is a riot, as is Paul Lynde in drag (goodness doesn't he look good in it) and Dick Martin and Edward Andrews in bed is quite a sight (don't worry it's more innocent than it sounds).Day perky and luminous, has deftly witty comic timing, sincerity and just charms everybody every time she's on screen in front of the camera and to the viewer watching. Satire comes easily to her. Taylor is charming if a little underused, while Lynde, Martin and Andrews are hilarious scene-stealers. Dom DeLuise provides some inspired seemingly improvisational comedy. A cameo from Robert Vaughn is also fun.Overall, extremely entertaining film with so much to recommend. One of Day's better later efforts if not quite one of her best overall. 8/10 Bethany Cox

bigverybadtom The glass-bottomed boat of the movie title appears only briefly in the movie, though the song that goes with it certainly is catchy. Jennifer Nelson appears first as a costumed mermaid working for her father, who owns the title boat, but then is seen working at an aerospace research laboratory, secretary to a brilliant scientist who falls is love with her.But through several mishaps and misunderstandings, the scientist and those around him get suspicious about whether she might be a spy for the Soviets. It turns out there are genuine Soviet spies around to add to the confusion. Even so, the scientist still wants Jennifer and keeps wooing her, showing her things like his super-advanced kitchen with all sorts of automatic devices and a dog-like cleanup robot.The humor of "I Love Lucy", but with less silliness, and "Get Smart" with fewer pratfalls.

Bogmeister MASTER PLAN: steal the new gravity formula. This would appear to be another in a long line of films spoofing the James Bond spy craze of the sixties, specifying the female perspective ("Modesty Blaise"; "Fathom"), but is more like just another in a long line of successful Doris Day comedies. Ms. Day was usually partnered with the likes of Rock Hudson or James Garner, leading men specializing in light comedy. In this case, her partner is Rod Taylor, who had just starred as "The Liquidator" the year before. Here, he's a very successful aeronautics engineer who has just invented a new formula for duplicating gravity while one flits about in outer space. Naturally, enemy agents would love to get their hands on this formula. Day's character, a widow, divides her time between a tour guide job at NASA, taking college courses and helping her dad by pretending to be a mermaid whenever he conducts one of his sightseeing tours from his glass bottom boat (hence, the title; yet, this boat plays no part in the plot except in the very beginning of the movie). Her dad is played by then-famous TV/Radio personality Godfrey, who didn't really star in films until then. Taylor accidentally snags Day when he goes fishing and she becomes bottomless, quite a suggestive scenario for those days, especially in Day comedies. Day continues her adorably furious posturing, setting up the requisite sexual tension between the two leads.The two leads slowly but surely hook up, in standard sappy, if silly, romance clichés, despite Day's preposterous predilection for clumsiness - she's a walking disaster area, very similar to some female characters in a couple of Matt Helm films and even the Bond films themselves. Taylor's character represents modern technology and progress; he's one of those guys who will be responsible for all of us getting around in flying cars at some point in the future. There are a few amusing scenes in Taylor's very modern house, where he shows off some gadgets to Day in his kitchen; I suppose it's a sad comment on how far we've progressed in the past 40 years that some of these still look very advanced. The whole spy angle really kicks in during the last third, during Taylor's house party, when all his compatriots are convinced that Day is a foreign spy. Seems she's been making weird phone calls to some guy named Vladimir and running off some numbers. Of course, the audience knows who Vladimir really is and this sets up the characters proceeding on a false assumption, which we get to snicker at. There's also the matter of who the real spy is. We've seen this before, many times, but the actors make it entertaining; Lynde is goofy as the head of security and Dick Martin is especially funny as Taylor's buddy. Dom DeLuise shows up in an early role, playing off of Day in some crude slapstick; he's better in his last scenes. Day & Taylor make a pretty good match, breezing through the romantic stuff. It's also interesting to see actor Fleming, who had just finished his long-running role on TV's "Rawhide" and died soon after this in a drowning mishap. Heroine:7 Villain:7 Male Fatales:7 Henchmen:5 Fights:4 Stunts/Chases:6 Gadgets:6 Auto:6 Locations:6 Pace:6 overall:6

Michael DeZubiria I say eventually because it takes about three quarters of the film before it appears to have a thought in its head, and even then it's not by much and only briefly. My problem with the movie is that for the vast majority of it, Doris Day's character Jenny is the typical stupid blonde, cheerfully grinning like a moron and twirling her hair, clueless to what is going on around her. I have a hard time getting over this kind of thing when I see it in the movies because I dated one or two girls that acted like that because they thought it was cute and it drives me out of my mind.It's incredible to me that the romance between Jenny and Mr. Templeton was ever considered romantic, it's so contrived and pretentious. The slapstick situations are shallowly manufactured, badly acted and thus not funny, but the heavy hand of the sixties is all over the movie, so at least it is a slightly interesting look at a different time as well as the kind of thing that was considered entertaining and romantic forty years ago. The movie takes a turn for the better when Jenny figures out what's going on by listening in on a phone call between Templeton and his military buddies and then decides to turn the tables on them, although it should be noted that during that phone call he insists that Jenny simply can't be a spy, she hasn't got the brains. She's offended and so are we, until we remember that he's right. Afterwards, she begins to display an intellect which had been largely absent thus far, but unfortunately, everyone else in the movie turns stupid in order to lead to a lot more goofy slapstick. It is telling that one of the first things that brings suspicion onto Jenny is a series of misunderstandings stemming from the fact that her dog's name is Vladimir. Strangely enough, the reason I watched the movie is because I took my girlfriend to Catalina Island recently for her birthday, and we took a tour in the exact same glass bottom boat which was used in this movie, and I thought it would be interesting to see the film shot in the boat I was sitting in, as well as to see what the astonishingly beautiful Avalon (the tiny town on Catalina Island) looked like in the mid 1960s. Needless to say, I was surprised to see that Avalon looks almost exactly the same, and that the glass bottom boat appears in the first five minutes or so of the movie and is never seen again. Odd that they would name the film after such an irrelevant plot device. Also don't miss the extra features on the DVD, one of which is a short video in which MGM claims that every girl's dream is to visit the MGM Studios in Culver City.