Sorry, this movie sucks

one of my absolute favorites!

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

What if they made a movie and no one could watch it? Perhaps it's not quite THAT bad, but it's close. Alda, Rooney, Carter and Tupou play four naval crewmen during WWII who become shipwrecked on a south sea island and who stumble upon a beached, old ship called the Curmudgeon. On board is mysterious and old-fashioned Niven, who guzzles scotch from a never-ending bottle and who wishes to get his rust bucket back in order and on to Australia. While looking for applicable supplies, the men are joined by gun-toting Dunaway, who winds up boarding the ship as well. The motley crew works on getting the ship seaworthy and heads off to Australia, but not before encountering the enemy and not before Alda discovers some "shocking" secrets about Niven. All through the film, old newsreels and classic footage from the 30's and 40's is inserted for comedic and/or ironic effect. Sometimes, the footage is more interesting or entertaining than any of the strained, dull or pointless new material that makes up the bulk of the film, though none of it is very arresting, in any case. Niven gives a laid back performance, to say the least. Alda is his typical self, which will appeal to some viewers more than others. Dunaway looks great, despite the lack of fashionable clothes or glamour and she also has a bit of spunk, at least at first. However, she's not given a lot to do and the part ends up as thankless. Rooney claims to have no memory of making the film at all according to his auto-bio and despite the reportedly trying conditions where it was filmed. Carter mostly hollers and eats baked beans. It's a bad film with very little to recommend it. If it were just a bit worse, it could count as campy or unintentionally funny, but it's just plain bad. Misguided, choppy and banal are other words that could be used to describe it. It's not the jewel of anyone's resume, but it's got to be one of the least notable films on Dunaway's, especially for this time period.

I don't know, maybe it started with "The Americanization of Emily", a great movie which I loved then and still love except for the message. The message? That all wars and even WW II are wasteful, useless, stupid, dumb and that there is really not that much difference between them and us. In this case, "The Extraordinary Seaman", Alan Alda is prematurely playing the role of Hawkeye Pierce from "Mash". David Niven is a slightly loony ghost who believes in duty and honor. I guess that's why he's loony. In this farce (in the bad sense) the ghost is trying to do the right thing as he sees it while Alda knows he's wrong. Somehow, twenty-two years after the Greatest Generation saved the world for the rest of us ingrates, it became OK to poke fun at them and what they believed. They were apparently all Colonel Blimps.Somehow, The rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the real Bridge on the river Kwai and the notorious vivisection and germ warfare experiments conducted in Manchuria by the Japanese either went away or became lost in some crazy moral equivilency drug haze by the folks who brought us this trash. Yeah, we flattened their cities but after they started it. Freshman logic, if A then B.And yes, what a zinger of an ending, it was all for naught. I especially liked the chess game. A war just ended that took perhaps 50 million, yes that's million lives and our admirals and their admirals sit down for a game of chess. I wonder how Bull Halsey liked the movie? More than that, I really , really wonder how all those buddies of my father, who never came home in 1945 would have liked this movie? We don't deserve what those guys gave us.To anyone who actually enjoyed this thing, I recommend mandatory viewing of "The Cruel Sea" until they finally "get it".

Faye Dunaway may be many things, but 'fun' rarely comes to mind. She was seductively clever in Richard Lester's "Musketeers" pictures, she had a squirrelly fashion-queen presence in "The Thomas Crown Affair", and in these later years she has projected a looser, warmer presence (such as in "Barfly" or "Don Juan DeMarco"). But here she's an icy blonde shiver: too cool, too calculating, and too aloof. This film, barely released at all by MGM, involves a group of military personnel circa WWII who are stranded on an island in the Pacific, coming upon a mystical sea captain and his creaky barge. Separated--for no apparent reason--into SIX acts, and interspersed with actual newsreel footage from the period, one has to assume the final cut was taken out of director John Frankenheimer's hands and muddied up by outsiders. Most of the actors look positively baffled, except of course for Faye. She looks shockingly unruffled by the inane plot or the silly dialogue, so placid is her demeanor. "Fun away with Dunaway"?? Anything for publicity... NO STARS from ****

This movie has all the elements of a great movie, with a suspense ending. The Ever-Lasting Bottle of Scotch, was a wonderful touch and I for one would love to have a bottle just like that. This movie, though far-fetched, was a wonderful imaginative film, and usually the type that had not only comedy, imagination, but great acting as well. It looked like they were all having fun in the making of it, and I found it hilarious while watching it in Calgary Alta .