'UP TO HIS EARS'.....INDIANA JEAN-PAUL....PART TWO....A LOONIER TUNE

Up To His Ears (1965)  Like an annoying puppy dog, this movie came yapping at the heels of its director's previous runaway hit, "That Man From Rio", the Tintin/James Bond mashup that the world fell in love with........including young master Spielberg, who remembered it well as he launched into Indiana Jones.....

           In the great tradition of movie directors seduced and engulfed by their own success, Philippe de Broca decided "Up To His Ears", taken from a Jules Verne story, would be 'Rio' inflated to the ultimate extreme........and like Spinal Tap, all the dials would turn up to 11......

           "Up To His Ears" falls under the category of an unofficial, un-sequel sequel.....much the same way that the louder, dumber, goofier "Kelly's Heroes"  serves as a followup to "Where Eagles Dare".
Jean Paul Belmondo, our 'Rio' vine-swinger, stars again,  this time as a depressed young heir contemplating suicide. While in Hong Kong with his fiance and her family, he allows his old Chinese mentor to set up a 30 day million dollar life insurance policy.......with the promise that his mentor will get around to killing Belmondo before the policy expires.

          The old fellow concocted this nutso scheme simply to snap Belmondo out of his ennui, but his rapacious would be in-laws smell blood, hiring an obese gangster and his army of minions to wipe out Jean Paul.......

           And that's it for the story, folks. With not a shred of logic or reality to anchor it, the movie aimlessly parades a never ending succession of chases,  escapes,fist fights, death defying stunts.. , car crashes, plane crashes, hot air balloon flights......none of it making any sense whatsoever.  And just in case we didn't know enough to not take it seriously, de Broca resorts to that desperate, bottom-of-the-cinematic-barrel technique, speeding up the film to make his actors scamper like Warner Brothers Looney Tunes characters.....yuk.

            We'll give it this much....a lot of this non-stop chaos stays watchable for the sheer crazy audacity on view. Spielberg obviously borrowed the Tibetan rickety rope bridge for 'Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom'.....and you can see the inspiration for Jackie Chan films as Belmondo and the villainous minions acrobatically clamber through an elaborate bamboo scaffolding like kids in a playground.  But at almost two hours, overall it's dopey, exhausting and senseless......and completely lacking the lighter-than-air humor of "That Man From Rio". (The Sexpot Girlfriend Role here falls to Ursula Andress, but unlike the previous film's Francoise Dorleac, she hasn't the slightest connection to the threadbare storyline......she just periodically pops up from time to time....like a guest host of Saturday Night Live.....

           Ultimately, de Broca didn't care much for the results he got trying to make an Goodyear blimp-sized version of "That Man From Rio".....and we can't say we blame him. "Rio' remains forever a gem with us, but "Up To His Ears"?  Mix up a big pitcher of Bahama Mammas to watch it....who knows, you might find it funnier....and comprehend the plot. 2 stars (**).....a little too Belmondo Bizarro.....