Billy Wilder directed several of the greatest movies in Hollywood history: Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, and The Apartment, among others.
With Kiss Me, Stupid he diversified his resume by directing one of the most awful debacles ever to litter the screen.
This movie isn't just bad, it's excruciatingly painful to sit through. There's so much wrong with it that it's hard to know where to start, but seeping through it all is a mean-spirited cynicism that drains whatever goodwill we might have otherwise granted the director even in his worst moments.
Whether through bad casting or spectacularly misguided direction, Wilder summons forth performances from his lead actors that are uniformly humiliating. They're the kind of roles that could ruin an actor's career, and probably did for several of the performers. Ray Walston's turn as piano teacher Orville J. Spooner is a sad spectacle that sours the memory of his great role in The Apartment. Watching Cliff Osmand's gas station attendant is akin to rubbing two pieces of styrofoam together, the kind of useless torment that is made more aggravating by its pointlessness. Kim Novak is transformed into a pitiful dumb broad, and Dean Martin plays himself, or, more pointedly, he plays the version of himself that his worst enemy might have imagined in a feverish bout of spite.
Walston's role originally belonged to Peter Sellers, who suffered a heart attack and was forced to withdraw from the picture. It's interesting to speculate whether Sellers' peculiar brand of genius might have redeemed this mess, if somehow his presence at the center of things would have given the production an object around which to revolve. On the other hand it's more plausible that he took one look at the first set of dailies and keeled over in his own best interests.
With Kiss Me, Stupid he diversified his resume by directing one of the most awful debacles ever to litter the screen.
This movie isn't just bad, it's excruciatingly painful to sit through. There's so much wrong with it that it's hard to know where to start, but seeping through it all is a mean-spirited cynicism that drains whatever goodwill we might have otherwise granted the director even in his worst moments.
Whether through bad casting or spectacularly misguided direction, Wilder summons forth performances from his lead actors that are uniformly humiliating. They're the kind of roles that could ruin an actor's career, and probably did for several of the performers. Ray Walston's turn as piano teacher Orville J. Spooner is a sad spectacle that sours the memory of his great role in The Apartment. Watching Cliff Osmand's gas station attendant is akin to rubbing two pieces of styrofoam together, the kind of useless torment that is made more aggravating by its pointlessness. Kim Novak is transformed into a pitiful dumb broad, and Dean Martin plays himself, or, more pointedly, he plays the version of himself that his worst enemy might have imagined in a feverish bout of spite.
Walston's role originally belonged to Peter Sellers, who suffered a heart attack and was forced to withdraw from the picture. It's interesting to speculate whether Sellers' peculiar brand of genius might have redeemed this mess, if somehow his presence at the center of things would have given the production an object around which to revolve. On the other hand it's more plausible that he took one look at the first set of dailies and keeled over in his own best interests.