Without a doubt one of the unfunniest and most depressingly hideous farces ever made. It's probably the film that if he wanted to, Dick Van Dyke would ask his fans not to watch, the venom worse from the idiocy of the script than bee sting that causes the whole plotline to unfold in one of the longest and most ridiculously annoying openings in film history. The bee flies all over Central Park, being shooed away, and finally choosing Dick for its victim. I'd rather deal with the bee than the women he's involved with from the top billed but barely used Angie Dickinson as the ex-wife to Rosemary Forsythe as the current girlfriend who nags like a wife of two decades to the trail of 60's "modern women" who are supposed to be smart and independent and just come off as loud and shrill.
Then there's practically every other character that passes through Van Dyke's life, all a bunch of ridiculous blowhards, a list that he finally joins when his fight against the bank that fired him because of his beard gets public attention. Director and screenwriter Garson Kanin, desperately seeking to be hip and cool, fails miserably, showing that not all the great talents could adapt as tastes changed. The issue of his beard upsetting so many people comes off forced, and as a parody of the fight against conformity, this is a bigger groaner than the slew of Jerry Lewis movies that cursed movie theaters around the same time. Definitely a rotten nut, and cuckoo, not cocoa.
Then there's practically every other character that passes through Van Dyke's life, all a bunch of ridiculous blowhards, a list that he finally joins when his fight against the bank that fired him because of his beard gets public attention. Director and screenwriter Garson Kanin, desperately seeking to be hip and cool, fails miserably, showing that not all the great talents could adapt as tastes changed. The issue of his beard upsetting so many people comes off forced, and as a parody of the fight against conformity, this is a bigger groaner than the slew of Jerry Lewis movies that cursed movie theaters around the same time. Definitely a rotten nut, and cuckoo, not cocoa.