Don't Make Waves [VHS]

Don't Make Waves [VHS]
by Alexander Mackendrick

Don't Make Waves [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Claudia Cardinale, Joanna Barnes, Robert Webber, Sharon Tate, Tony Curtis
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Producer: John Calley
Producer: Julian Bercovici
Producer: Martin Ransohoff
Writer: George Kirgo
Writer: Ira Wallach
Writer: Maurice Richlin
Writer: Terry Southern
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Analog; English (Dubbed), Analog; French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Running Time: 96 minutes
Release Date: 1997-02-18
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: MGM/UA Home Video
Studio: MGM/UA Home Video

VHS Movie Reviews of Don't Make Waves [VHS]

Movie Review: AN OVERLOOKED GEM
Summary: 4 Stars

This is one movie that everyone can enjoy. It's very funny and well-acted. Tony Curtis is so over-looked, and this movie is just another example of what a talented performer he is. Comedy was always Curtis' greatest strength and he plays it well here. But the movie is an excellent vehicle for Sharon Tate. Cast in the perfect role as a stunning bikini-clad beach goddess, Tate shows she has a talent for comedy as she plays the foil to Curtis' well-honed chops. All and all, this one is a delightful romp and worthy of an audience.

Movie Review: When will this film be on DVD?
Summary: 5 Stars

One of Sharon's best films, she never looked better. They need to release this and Eye of the Devil on DVD.

Movie Review: California Dreamin'
Summary: 5 Stars

very enjoyable, fast-paced feel-good flick from the mid sixties. The Mort Sahl scene is priceless! I don't understand why it's not out on dvd. Looking at the exorbitant amounts being asked for VHS versions, you'd think there would be a market for a dvd release with perhaps some extras like a Tony Curtis commentary.

Movie Review: "We just reject all the ones we can't stand, and sort through whatever's left...." (3.5 stars)
Summary: 4 Stars

I recorded this off TCM last week, mostly because I saw it had an appearance by Sharon Tate from the same year she did "The Fearless Vampire Killers." Which is, of course, a perfectly good reason to see any movie.

And while there's a fair amount here to satisfy people who just want to see Tate -- specifically some long, strange shots of her in a bikini bouncing endlessly on a beachside trampoline -- there's a lot more going on here.

"Waves" is basically a rake's progress tale as stammering, backstory-free Tony Curtis arrives in California and charms/scams his way to the top of a Malibu swimming pool empire.

Along the way he meets the aforementioned Tate (as a vacant but intrepid skydiver named ... Malibu); an accident-prone, broken-English-spouting Claudia Cardinale who destroys Curtis' little VW and then helps him stage his comeback; her sugar daddy (Robert Webber); his angry, voluptuous wife (a criminally underutilized Joanna Barnes); a queeny, crooked astrologer; future Mr. Universe David Draper; and, oddly enough, Jim Backus who, in an almost Charlie Kaufman-esque scene, plays himself and offers to do Mr. Magoo voice readings for Curtis at the promise of a free pool.

It even has an animated opening sequence (depicting Curtis' VW on an antic world tour) with music by The Byrds.

Basically, this is one of those glossy, widescreen, Metrocolor sexless sex farce confections from the waning days of the studio system -- Benjamin Braddock had to live somewhere nearby, but had he wandered into the story, the universe probably would've collapsed into itself.

What's odd, though, is that this was made by director Alexander Mackendrick exactly 10 years after he and Curtis made "The Sweet Smell of Success" together. Mackendrick doesn't have material by Lehman and Odets this time; the script is by one writer (Maurice Richlin) responsible for Inspector Clouseau and "Operating Petticoat," another (George Kirgo) who'd just penned the Elvis Presley epic "Spinout," and -- should it even be a surprise -- an uncredited Terry Southern.

Obviously, "Success" is the classic acid indictment of fame and corruptive ambition and the sting of betrayal. That film had its stark black-and-white photography, its potent and bustling New York aesthetic, its whip-cracking dialogue and a genuine taste of bile in its mouth. Which makes it not so much the *opposite* of the sunny, West Coast "Waves," but a reversed or negative image of it. It's Bizarre-O "Success."

And one of the reasons "Waves" is interesting is because you can tell there's some kind of force behind it, you can smell a whiff of satire beyond its heavy seabreeze, perfume and cigar smoke. But those aromas never quite waft to the forefront. The movie is intelligent and somewhat literate without ever actually being smart; witty without ever really being funny; and fairly sexy without ever attempting to even acknowledge the ramifications of its own weird carnality.

But it's also strangely paced and rambling without ever really being boring. As a result, I think it's a fascinating movie, even though the awkward slapstick grows tiresome and leads to a conclusion in which all the characters wind up in the same valley bachelor pad together and find themselves swept up in a SoCal landslide. But even then, it's hard not to admire the strange elaborate detail of ... the film's disaster effects (!). Yep, this is a bedroom farce in which Cardinale at one point literally has to leap for her life while a lavish patio crumbles under her feet. You can't tell me that doesn't have something to do with something besides the general plot.

By the way: I'm reviewing the VHS version of this only because there's no DVD. Don't buy the tape, though, the compositions will of course get killed by the pan-and-scan.

Movie Review: The satirical gaze!
Summary: 5 Stars

After the rotund success of "Someone like it hot", this is perhaps, the most provocative satire about then lives and times of South California around a beautiful house that will become a particular hell. The cast is incredibly good.

Don't miss it!

Write your own review

Action & Adventure Video

Genres
Comedy > By Theme > Love & Romance > Love Triangle
Satire
Drama > Love & Romance > Love Triangle
Educational > Languages > French
Spanish
Action & Adventure

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