"Don't Make Waves" -- is it an attempt at an mature beach movie? A spoof of beach movies? A midlife crisis movie? A Tony Curtis-as-middle-aged-hustler movie?
Tony Curtis plays a not-so-young man whose life is ruined and all his earthly belongings destroyed by an accident prone mistress (Cardinale) of an obnoxious pool magnate (Webber). Curtis worms his way into the pool company -- apparently not to wreak revenge (or is it) but just to get ahead. On the way he picks up a cute sky-diving obsessed young woman (Tate -- who unfortunately has become a curiosity piece in the few movies she lived to make) who was also being sought out by a good-hearted and dull-witted Muscle Beach type (Drake).
The characters wind confusingly through each others lives until they come to a climax that needs better special effects than they had in 1967, and then the movie ends abruptly.
The movie shows lots of potential trying to get out. There are many good ideas thrown out. Some lie flaccid after being thrown out, others are merely thrown out and left to die.
The cast is full of surprises: Mort Sal as a wry house salesman, Edgar Bergen as a fortune teller, Jim Backus (as wife) as themselves, being hustled by Curtis into buying a pool! And this also proves how the movie went wrong. Edgar Bergen had a charming persona in his act, which (for those of you who don't remember) as a ventriloquist -- on the radio, no less. Instead of playing to his charming persona, they cast him as a waspish old man; and instead of playing on his ventriloquism to make the character wacky, they ignore it completely. They shoehorned a man with special talents into a part that could have been played by any competent actor, and which should have been played as a gift cameo part for someone who would pull out all the comedic stops (say,Paul Lynde?)
Pluses include the Vic Mizzy sound, and the fact that, and the obvious fact that none of the actors take the material seriously, except for Robert Webber, whom no one seems to have told was in a comedy. It's a movie that one watches the way one eats sour cream and onion potato chips if one doesn't like sour cream. The taste both repels and attracts. It's movies like this that ensured the decline of Tony Curtis' career.
