Simply Perfect

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Richard Carlson (of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "It Came From Outer Space") is excellent as the naive, bespectacled, non-smoking, non-drinking millionaire Tommy Van Steele who takes his uncle's advice to experience life in this action-filled comedy. As the chief engineer and owner of a major automotive manufacturing company, he winds up going incognito into the blue-collar world of trucking (Howard Hughes himself went undercover early in his life to work for a major airline in order to learn from them, but Carlson's character is more like Howard Bannister in "What's Up, Doc?"). He eventually discovers, embraces, and falls in love with the real world. Jane Darwell (famous for "The Grapes of Wrath," among others) plays the feisty heart-of-gold grandma of babe Jane Randolph (she was Alice in both "Cat People" movies). Not quite a "screwball comedy," but darn near. Plus some great (and corny) fight scenes!