Should be titled, 'Don't Watch Me, Stupid'
Just saw this curiosity on TCM; Robert Osborne's intro about how bad the critics panned it originally and the Catholic Legion of Decency blacklisted it made me curious to see if it really lived up to how bad I had read in other places it was.
Let me assure you, it was definitely UNFUNNY. Yes, I know Billy Wilder was pushing the envelope in the early 60's with this, trying to be hip, cool, and provocative but it all just comes out rather crude and/or unfunny. I don't think I cracked a smile at all throughout the movie. I certainly didn't laugh at it.
Dean Martin's acting was smooth and natural (maybe it wasn't an act?), the Barney and Zelda characters were professionally played, but Ray Walston and Kim Novak just seemed to be always a half-beat off on their characters, Walston just trying too hard and Novak just hard to watch and listen to, trying to imitate a Marilyn-Monroe-doing-a-Joisey/Brooklyn accent.
This movie was so hard to watch at times that I was about to turn it off more than once, but I guess I just had to watch it all the way through at least once to see just how bad it was. Let me tell you, it was bad - let me save you some time and recommend you skip it. (Robert Osborne did mention in his intro that Peter Sellers was supposed to play the husband role but had some heart attacks and had to drop out; Marilyn Monroe was also supposed to play Kim Novak's role but had tragically died by then. I can see how Sellers and Monroe would have been much better based on their past comedic roles; yes, the script would have still been amateurish but the execution would have been more passable and less grating.)
It has this horrible feel of like a community theater group trying their darnedest with a very unfunny script, and just plugging away at it. You have to wonder if the cast knew how bad the script was while they were filming it.
A couple of interesting trivia tidbits - I see from the IMDB full cast listing that the great voice artist Mel Blanc played the dentist cameo, and Laugh-In's Henry Gibson played "Smith" (which character was that?).
If you want to see what I think is Kim Novak's best role, skip this "Kiss Me, Stupid" travesty, bypass Hitchcock's "Vertigo," and seek out the lesser-known 1960 "Strangers When We Meet." Kim does a great job as a naive, emotionally vulnerable, naturally stunning suburban neighborhood beauty in that movie who gets entangled in a relationship with nearby stay-at-home architect Kirk Douglas. That movie hits all the right notes in all their complexities; a little suburban Peyton Place, simmering and boiling just beneath the calm suburbia surface.
As for tonight's movie, for the life of me, I can't figure out how it ever rated a 7.0 on the IMDB 10.0 scale. I logged on, fully expecting to see a 2.5 or thereabouts. I guess it's time to put my 1.5 vote in to help reach a more realistic average rating....