Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title (1966)

Dinosaurs roamed when these jokes were hatched. The whole movie is a setup for one liners, sight gags and telegraphed physical jokes. The best actor was a turtle who managed a realistic portrayal. The plot such as it seems to be forgotten often in the vain attempt at laughs. I put on the spoiler warning, because the only thing I laughed at was Milton Berle's hoary old chestnut about trying to push a rope. He still had the timing that the rest lacked. The sad thing is that I'm watching this on the "This" network because everything else was infomercials. The wasteland has arrived. I'm even enduring 20 minutes of commercials per hour. You know you're in trouble when "Charley Weaver" complete with pork pie hat appears as a Russian. Not cool enough to be camp. Trashing modern art in 1966 is ludicrous, although I don't know what year they are playing (but must be after 1960 since they included a cosmonaut.) The real problem is telegraphing the jokes and the gags. The cake on the seat is the most obvious. I enjoyed the cameos in a Where's Waldo kind of way, but watching the cast of the Dick Van Dyke show less the leads do bad jokes is painful. The college disco party (called beatnik party) is particularly bad. Did the writers go to school in the 1920s? Richard Deacon as the "undercover" cop is unintentionally hilarious. The fat lady spy looks like the housewife on "The Guild" and has a couple of moments. Look to Get Smart for a way to do a spy spoof or more seriously "In Like Flint" that are funny because they aren't so earnest at being bad. I can't give it one star, because I'm still watching even after Ma Clampett shows up giving the hitchhiking "stars" a ride even after Rose Marie steals a bit from a 30s movie. Even Moe Howard wasn't funny, playing a lawyer ?!? straight!

This was a lost film for decades, until someone at Turner and United Artists resurrected it for a few TV showings. Apropos of all the other reviews here, unless you enjoy 60s culture as viewed by middle-aged men of the period, the movie will leave you at a loss. Morey Amsterdam, who co-wrote and produced, and Rose Marie are alternately embarrassing and silly. Morey's one-liners were dinosaurs on the vaudeville circuit and would have been rejected immediately for the Alan Brady Show. A low-budget and unfunny pastiche of bad jokes that simply painful to sit through. However, there is some amusement in seeing Richard Deacon try in vain to rise above the material. A few of the cameo roles are of historical interest. A bomb at the box office when first released in 1966, this film is best left in the vault.

This had a long reputation as one of the worst movies ever made, though few had actually seen it. It took me until the winter of 2007 to catch up with this one, and while by no means a good movie, it is at least an interesting one. I understand that the backstory behind this low budget production was that The Dick Van Dyke Show was wrapping up, and a few of its stars put together an independent movie. Morey Amsterdam produced, co-wrote, and starred, along with Rose Marie and Richard Deacon. As insurance, he filled his script with jokes, and filled his movie with cameos. Its plot about spies and espionage does not hold together, but now, after 40 years, the movie works on another level. The plot is dated, the stars and cameos are very much from another era of showbiz, and the jokes are of the irresistibly corny variety that have also faded into memory. So now the film is a quirky little cultural artifact of sorts. It is not good cinema, but in the wake of the Police Academy series, Dude Where's My Car, and Freddy Got Fingered, it can hardly be called among the worst movies ever made. It is offbeat, silly, dated, and, if you're in the right frame of mind, rather fun, especially if you have an interest in the era, or fond memories of it.

One of the weirder things I've seem on TV. Turner Classic Movies has been showing some rarely seen stuff lately and some of the movies are gems.I certainly wouldn't call this a gem by any means. I mainly turned it on just to see why I'd never heard of it before. First I thought I turned on TV Land by mistake. Most of the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show is in this. I noticed there was no laugh track when Morey Amsterdan cracked a one liner and something seemed missing. That sent me to IMDb to investigate. I then watched simply because of the cameo appearances in the movie.The movie has a lot of sight gags and wise cracks. A bit like an over length 3 Stooges episode and it does have Moe Howard in one of his final screen appearances.