Who's Minding the Mint? (1967)

Caper comedies were a genre of all star and big laugh films of the 60s that almost were the opposite to star studded epics. Usually 9 or so B grade TV clebs were offered roles supporting each other in a robbery/family/holiday/suburban film, as a result we were treated in big old cinemas full of laughing families with a dozen or so... the most famous being MAD MAD WORLD and TOPKAPI. There were the teen star pix from AIP like BEACH PARTY and SKI PARTY etc where a dozen TV kids and 6 pop groups all appeared in a holiday film. BUONA SERA MRS CAMPBELL is a good adult one. Inbetween was a film like MINT. The genre culminated with WITH SIX YOU GET EGGROLL and YOURS MINE AND OURS. I think the last was the wonderful ANGEL IN MY POCKET ...with Andy Griffith and COLD TURKEY in 1971. We also got divorce comedies like NOT WITH MY WIFE YOU DON'T and DIVORCE American STYLE, which followed WHAT A WAY TO GO. So, WHO'S MINDING THE MINT is a all star genre comedy for families that involves TV stars now in a real movie and is about a gentle 'robbery' and wacky Uncle and Aunty type characters. Like a Don Knotts movie. As a kid I loved it and as a teen I often showed it to school groups in holiday halls. Other comments will tell you the story but let me assure you it is a terrific family DVD night possibility if every 'they' release it. One unforgettable scene in a boat in a underground canal has a hilarious 'Washington crossing the Delaware' joke about it.

I saw this film not long after its original release, and it stuck in the back of my mind for some 35 years. Thanks to the internet I discovered it recently, but I was dreadfully disappointed. I had remembered it as an extremely funny film, but what made me laugh as a 12-year old made me cringe as an adult.The film only begins to attempt humour half-way through, but script and direction are extremely flabby and the cast sleep-walk their way through this limp rag of a movie.There are plenty of funny films from the '60s, but I'm afraid this is not one of them.

This film and "The Busy Body" are the two forgotten comic gems of the 1960s in that genre of films where all the prominent comedians appeared together. We recall "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming?", "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines", "Monte Carlo, or Bust?", and "The Wrong Box". But these two films not recalled, probably because the settings are not as colorful as the other films. Several of them are period pictures, one is set on Nantucket Island, and one is a type of cross-country chase based on greed. Greed plays a part in "Who's Minding the Mint?" and "The Busy Body", but the settings (while unusual in both films - here with a government building at night, and a sewer transversed by row boats, the other one dealing with a barbecue on a skyscraper's terrace and a corpse set up on a bench with a woman trying to vamp it)are not quite as colorful.I like both movies, and this one is funny for reasons starting with it's cast and going through the routines and shticks they throw up. Victor Buono normally played villains or neurotics in films (even in comedies like "Four For Texas", but also "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, where he wasn't the actual villain). Here he is a sea captain, who has dreamed of building a great sailing boat. Unfortunately he captains the little boats on a kiddie ride in the park. Milton Berle is a successful pawn shop owner, who lets his greed get the better of him - and neatly expands the complications of plotting in the film. Bob Denver, nominally an ice cream truck driver, turns into a sex idol. Jack Gilford is a great safe cracker, but he has gone deaf in prison (don't ask), and now needs a good hearing aide to hear the tumblers fall into place. So it goes on and on. Even Joey Bishop finally had a decent comic turn here as a man with a serious gambling problem. The Rat Pack films never served him as well. Jim Hutton and Dorothy Provine make a nice, appealing couple, with Walter Brennan as a type of fairy "godfather" to them. But there is a cute lesson about the true value of paper money. Supposedly the level of paper currency is watched to prevent inflation like that type which Weimer Germany had in 1922-23. But the plot involves reprinting much paper money to cover an error, and then some. As this would be included in the official records of the printing plant, it would be subsumed into the normal level of money printed each year. Nobody would ever notice the additional greenbacks that have been printed illegally. So if the record conforms perfectly, there is no actual counterfeiting. So much for the value of paper money...at least in this movie's point of view.

It's a smaller-scale "Mad Mad Mad etc World" with some crafty veteran gagsters (Gilford, Berle, Buono, Brennan, Bishop et al) doing their shtick. Small improbabilities build and build until you end up with a string of boats with wildly-costumed characters sailing in an improbable location from an impossible caper. Total on-screen madness, yet it made sense at every small plot step along the way. Tightly-constructed and very much a late-60s comedy. It's one of those favorites you're slightly ashamed of.