A box office flop despite the fact it was from Blake Edwards and had James Coburn coming off Our Man Flint and a concept that would've seemed idea for the cynical sixties I'd have thought - a US unit in Italy comes across a town that wants to surrender after their wine festival, so the Yanks pretend to meet resistance, which brings in the Germans and US superiors. That's funny.
But maybe when you pick at it, it's not - World War Two was a Good War, so they are ducking out of important service. Also why can't they surrender and then do the wine festival? It doesn't make sense. It maybe would've worked if it was near the end of the war and they'd been sent to fight silly battles and there was a better reason to stop - like give the Americans a really villainous gneneral.
The movie falters in terms of characterisation. The leads are Dick Shawn and James Coburn but Coburn's role is sidelined. I think Shawn is meant to be uptight and Coburn laid back but Shawn gets un-uptight pretty quickly and Edwards can't seem to think of things for Coburn to do, or Aldo Ray who's also in there. Operation Petticoat had very defined characters - Cary Grant was uptight and by the book, the nurses called havoc, Tony Curtis was on the make... The characters here aren't as fixed. You could cut Coburn and Ray out of the film and made it about Shaw and Sergio Fantoni - actually that's what it should've been.
It looks gorgous, there's some funny bits, it was good to see Shawn in a lead role. I did sense Edwards would've been happier with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. But also Edwards liked Coburn - he used him on Waterhole 3 and The Carey Treatment - why not give him more to do. The Italian female doesn't have much of a character, or does Sergio Fantoni (friendly Italian).
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