hyped garbage

Am I Missing Something?

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This funny movie is just plain fun...!!! The thirty year old Shirley McLaine is a hoot..!! Peter Ustinov has a ball with his role as the king. You should know this movie is a farce; it is not great art, but for some fun, I suggest you watch this movie. If you do watch it and like it...consider it my gift to you.

Arabs, Jews, college football teams, United States Politicians and the military, all get scathed in this over-the-top comedy where a fictional Arab country tries to go American after the son of the King is denied the chance to play on an Ivy League football team. It all starts with famed photographer Shirley MacLaine agreeing to go over to Fawzia to infiltrate the aging King's harem, and while there, she gets involved with one of her previous victims (Richard Crenna as the title character) in aiding the Fawzian football team to play and beat Notre Dame. This ain't no Knute Rockne or even Gus the football kicking mule. This is mud-slinging at its silliest, and you can almost hear the screenwriters laughing out loud as they see the dialog they've written and silly gags they've made into something that even the Three Stooges would turn down. The most outlandish casting comes with Peter Ustinov, truly overdoing it as King Fawz, whether driving around on his outrageous choo-choo train, playing with an all gold model train, or overreacting to MacLaine's fat suit disguise to avoid spending an evening in his company. This is the type of comedy that probably appealed in 1965 to 13 year old boys who were laughing at Gilligan's Island and re-runs of the Three Stooges shorts. For adults, this will appeal to them for the plethora of character actors who appear in small roles, among them Charles Lane as MacLaine's wise-cracking boss (apologizing for making a mistake in hiring her for this project as he really needed a woman), Fred Clark, Jim Backus, David Lewis ("General Hospital's" first Edward Quartermain) and Harry Morgan as government flackies arguing over who sent an Arab King pigskin luggage, and especially Wilfred Hyde White as Ustinov's bossy assistant who treats him like a child. There's even Leon Askin ("Hogan's Heroes"), Richard Deacon ("The Dick Van Dyke Show") and a young Jerry Orbach. While Patrick Adiarte ("The King and I", "Flower Drum Song") does not at all seem to be Arab, he's very charming as Ustinov's young son, making me feel sorry for the woman forced to sleep with Ustinov. Way down the cast list is young James Caan as one of Notre Dame's football players. It seems like they kept everything in, including the harem sink. You've got to give credit where credit is due, and this movie (controversial in 1964) has one of the most outlandish opening songs in film history, sung by its very funny star. I just wonder what she thought of this movie at the time, because I think I've read somewhere that now she considers it to be a career embarrassment. Certainly at the time, she was more known for her comedy, and this was in line with "The Apartment" and "Irma La Douce" that saw her as somewhat pathetic, if still interesting, characters. I happen to find it a guilty pleasure, having laughed hysterically at it in my early 20's, and smiling with amusement and remembrance 30 years later. Still, it's up there on many "worst" lists, and if indeed it does come off very tacky at times and definitely a slap in the face at the groups I mention above, it's an example of freedom of expression that doesn't exist anymore and hopefully might remind us not to take everything around us so seriously.

John Goldfarb, Please Come Home is a movie that the whole family can watch and will appeal to older children until the age of 14 and adults 30 and up. Those in-between might not enjoy it as much. It is an amusing movie with little plot. The acting is good. The humor is good and old school. It is a prime time movie. However, there is little substance to the movie. Yet, there is not supposed to be any, just funny. There are a lot of good actors/actresses in the movie to make it funny and serious enough to stay funny and silly. Laughter is the best medicine, or so they say -- so enjoy this medicine for the soul. It is a crazy film. Bring plenty of popcorn and family or friends to enjoy this old school funny movie. No depth, no substance, just crazy laughter.

Two sorts of minds watch "John Goldfarb"--"realists" who regard the movie as a satirical send-up of U.S. public-interest postmodernists, and "surrealists" who regard the surrealized Establishment in the U.S. as realistic and miss the movie's point. Since I am the leader of the first group, I regard "Goldfarb" as one of the funniest satires ever made. The behavior of Establishment types throughout the film is consonant with and nearly as inane as their real-life performances before or since 1965. The plot involves a man dogged by cosmic bad luck, John Goldfarb, dubbed "Wrong Way" by a female reporter after an unfortunate football play some years earlier. A U-2 pilot for the USAF, he meets the same reporter, while going the wrong way in a Washington building. He takes off on a secret mission over Russia, she is forced by her editor to take on an un-feminist assignment: to get the lowdown on girls being smuggled into a Middle Eastern harem, belonging to king Fawz of Fawzia. The third thread of the story is the need to placate oil-rich U.S.ally Fawz after our ambassador sends him pigskin luggage for his anniversary and his son is dropped from Notre Dame's football team, and complains the coach did it because he is Arab, not Irish. The three strands become a tangled knot when his instruments fail and Goldfarb lands not in Russia but in Fawzia, when his fuel runs out. And, of course, he is recruited by Fawz--to train an Arab football team that can defeat Notre Dame and avenge the insult to his son...Goldfarb tries to hold out, shows the King film of Notre Dame's powerful college squad but cannot dissuade him. The King then bribes him with a harem girl; he recognizes Jenny, the girl reporter; she is now trapped in the harem, having been told Fawz is too old for sex but having been singled out for attention by the lecherous king. He chooses her from among a group of eager dancers, to Fawz's displeasure; and they set up housekeeping in a room of the palace; every few hours, a golden toy train goes by, and Fawz asks, "Are you still happy with her?". This Goldfarb nominates (classically) as "dittahowatrola", since a victrola is playing on the train, while a camera snaps flash pictures and a penguin is carried by. He trains a team, finally, to get to go home. Of course they are a disaster--until he recruits Bedouin warriors as college students: "Our country right or wrong," he murmurs. Then it's the turn of the government which lost him in the first place to try to deal with his disappearance; they put ads in newspapers, "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home". And the State Department has to convince the head of Notre Dame to allow his team to play the Arab squad, no easy task. The game is played; and the party that precedes it and the game have become cinematic classics. This is a sexy, spirited and often intelligent romp with only the utter ineptitude of the U.S.'s State Department types as its parody element; it has marvelous satire of Republican governmental methods and sly jabs at every group concerned. Directed with style by J. Lee Thompson, the film boasts set decorations by Stuart A. Reiss and Walter M. Scott, lovely costumes by Adele Balkan, Edith Head and Ray Aghayan, bright cinematography by legendary Leon Shamroy, art direction by Dale Hennesy and Jack Martin Smith. The cast included Richard Crenna as the "crooked astronaut 'Wrong Way' Goldfarb, Pete Ustinov hamming delightfully as the King, Shirley Maclaine trying hard as a frigid girl reporter, Fred Clark, Harry Morgan, Jim Backus, Richard Deacon, David Lewis, and Milton Frome as the government hacks, plus Telly Savalas, Leon Askin, Jerome Cowan, Charles Lane, Jerry Ohrbach, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Patrick Adiarte as the Prince, Scott Brady as Notre Dame's Coach, Jackie Coogan as the University's beleaguered Chancellor, Angela Douglas, Nai Bonet, Irene Tsu and Sultanna as harem girls and now-familiar actors in smaller roles. The film has a fun situation, color, laughs and pretty girls. When Fred Clark pulls the pin on a place destroyed by a cobalt bomb and wonders, "Thulia Oman?", we know we are dealing with a realistic portrayal our state department. Music by John Williams, state department types named Subtle Overreach and Miles Whitepaper--this may be Hollywood but it's as near as the latest headline.