This indie comedy is easy to mock, as it has such a quaint approach to the "nudie-cutie" genre of softcore '60s movies. In fact it would be classified just a "cutie" since a decision was made at some point to avoid any nudity at all.
Arch Hall Sr., known for sponsoring his untalented son Arch Hall Jr. In some of the most reviled movies around (other than "The Sadist", a classic) co-wrote and co-stars, clearly devoid of talent. The slapstick and one-note "comedy" (about bras and voyeurism) content is poorly but insistently done, and the movie runs about two reels too long by any standard.
It's an artifact of interest as an example of how real talent has to start off at the bottom in an industry that is something of an oligopoly, in this case dominated by major studios. Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs photographed "What's Up Front!", and less than a decade later had graduated to become the best directors of photography in the entire industry. Russ Meyer famously as an independent producer-director successfully emerged with his brand of sex and action cinema, and in drive-in mode Roger Corman became legendary with his sci-fi/fantasy and youth films. "What's Up Front!" is a failure in its merely recycling very, very hold (and stale) comical cliches dating back to vaudeville routines.
The star Tommy Holden is insufferable; any honeymoon with the viewer giving him a chance to be funny is over within the first few minutes, yet he keeps going and going nowhere interminably. The bevy of beauties simply aren't attractive -presumably a cardinal sin for this genre. Compare with Barry Mahon who created a formidable catalogue of similar but far better softcore features and short films in this time period. Same team from "What's Up Front!" earlier made "Magic Spectacles", same concept but hopefully a bit sexier.
