Thursday, June 21, 2012

1966 - WHAT'S UP TIGER LILY? silly Woody Allen movie

Woody Allen and some of his cronies take a Japanese spy film called International Secret Police:  Key of Keys and dub in a new soundtrack with a silly story and a bunch of half clever jokes.  The result is sort of funny and mighty stupid.   

 Akiko Wakabayashi

The producer took the finished film which ran about an hour and stuck in some songs by The Lovin' Spoonful and padded it out with some additional footage.  Allen ended up suing the producer for compromising his artistic vision?  When this dopey film made money,  Allen dropped his lawsuit.

The whole thing hardly seems worth the trouble. 

Probably one of the stranger things about the film is the involvement of the future stars of You Only Live Twice, Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama.  Between the two of them these two actors were chased around by King Kong, Godzilla, Ghidorah and James Bond.

 Mie Hama

What's Up Tiger Lily is about half hilarious with most of the real funny stuff coming in the first half of the film,  after that the picture seems to run out of ideas and just drags itself across the finish line.

80 minutes, written by Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Len Maxwell, Julie Bennett, Frank Buxton, Mickey Rose, Bryna Wilson and Hideo Andô.

No comments: