I guess this film was supposed to have some deeper meaning...

...about conformity and stuff, but it came off really as one long, not-very-funny joke about a beard.

I must have seen this movie once a long time ago, and did not remember any of it at all, except the part where the Zen master repeatedly tossed his bowl of tea in Van Dyke's face. When I watched it again last night on TCM, that part seemed oddly familiar. But the rest of it had completely evaporated from my memory.