Don't Make Waves

New Yorker Carlo Cofield (Tony Curtis) is driving in southern California. He encounters flighty Italian Laura Califatti (Claudia Cardinale) who accidentally sets his car on fire destroying all his worldly possessions. He asks for her insurance but she offers a place to stay instead. Her patron Rod Prescott (Robert Webber) shows up and kicks him out. Carlo is forced to sleep on the beach and Malibu (Sharon Tate) saves him from drowning. He pushes his way into Prescott's company as the high priced pool salesman. He also discovers that Prescott is married to Diane (Joanna Barnes). He schemes to break up Malibu from her muscle bound boyfriend Harry.

I don't really like Carlo. The world is transitioning outside. The muscle beach concept is a little fun if a little silly. This feels like two stories smashed into one. I think Carlo as a fish out of water in the California beach lifestyle holds good possibilities. As for the other half with Cardinale and Webber, that should be the love triangle if that's the story for the movie. The movie needs to cut out one side or the other. The combination becomes a mess. Also, Carlo schemes too much for my liking for the lead. I don't want him to end up with anyone. Overall, I don't find much funny in this comedy.

This is one of my favorite movies about Los Angeles. It has everything.

Gorgeous locations on the beach, stunningly beautiful actors, a brilliant and witty script full of hilarious, exageratted incidents which are nevertheless typical of LA.

It is not only funny but engaging, the plot is interesting. It was even better the second time I saw it on the big screen, where it is best seen.

I was totally captivated by this film.

I find this film much wittier and funnier, for example, than "Some Like It Hot", also with Curtis, and I find Sharon Tate much sexier than Monroe in that film.

The plot is a bit crazy but compeletely believable and consistent with itself and reality; as a comedy it falls in the exagerrated or surrealistic category, only slightly dark because of the various difficulties that beset the hero.

Above all it is a brilliant comment on Los Angeles of the sixties and is still valid in the 2000's. An overlooked gem, a great cast, which may work best for those who have lived in LA.

Another film like this, with good LA locations, less comedy more suspense, is "Into the Night".

Tony Curtis made alot of bad movies around this time, but DON'T MAKE WAVES is one of his better films. Here Curtis, as Carlo, is a southern Californian who's life is turned upside down when his car with all of his worldly possessions is accidentally destroyed by the beautiful Claudia Cardinale. Taking pity on Carlo, she takes him to her apartment. Sugar daddy (Robert Webber) soon shows up and promptly throws Carlo out. Having had enough, Carlo takes his circumstances and newfound information and turns them into a grand lifestyle. The usually funny Joanna Barnes turns in a sobering performance as Webber's neglected wife. Bodybuilding title holder Dave Draper is very good as not too bright musclebound Harry. It is the late Sharon Tate's performance as Malibu, Harry's on again off again sky diving girlfriend that is the real find in this movie. She's gorgeous, sexy, and about as swift as Harry. Feeling overlooked by Harry and his muscle buddies, she deadpans to Curtis, "If you were a man, would you find me attractive?" Title song performed by THE BYRDS. The rest of the score was done by Vic Mizzy, who also did the music to GREEN ACRES. In case you wondered why the music had a familiar ring to it, that's the reason. Fair amount of cameos by movie & TV stars. Look for Edgar Bergen, Jim Backus......and others.

Okay middle aged version of a Beach Party film has tourist Tony Curtis visiting California and run off the road by Claudia Cardinale, who then takes him back to her place, where a French style bedroom farce ensures. These kooky 20 and 30 somethings encounter crazy Californian surfers, bodybuilders, skydivers, and other assorted kooks. The film is never boring, but it's also never all that funny or clever either. One of the positives for the film is a supporting role by Sharon Tate, who's gorgeous and again had a terrific screen presence, reminding us of of what a loss the world had with her murder. Overall, if you want a lightweight comedy to the pass the time (which you'll completely forget about once it's over), you could do worse than "Don't Make Waves."

"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.