How could we not love it? It crazily attempts to depict the social convulsion of the '60's through the cloudy, milky eyes of a 1950's Hollywood workhorse.....writer director George Seaton.....
The movie derives its Never Never Land charm and innocence from Seaton's complete disconnect from everything transpiring in late 1960's modern society.......a subject about which he knows less than what's on the dark side of the moon.....
As the camera glides over Manhattan, the soundtrack fills with a G-rated, Universal Studios version of irascible New Yorkers sniping at each other....("You mother sleeps in pay toilets!")
Into cranky NYC flies a banana-beaked Toucan carrying a 'happiness' virus.........once infected, you stop being so pissed off and start behaving like a extra cheerful Disneyland park employee.
burnt-out 50's beatniks, depressed semi-comatose jobless slobs living in gloomy darkness......(for all we know, it could be Seaton's idea of how he thought the Beats ended up after the first flush of their coffee club days....)
The guys in this bunch, including George Peppard as a ad agency exile, sport heavy beards. As for the women.......well, one of them's called 'The Sack'......cause she wears a sack over her head. But the other two, Mary Tyler Moore and Susan Saint James, are look-alike cuties in black turtlenecks......as if they're waiting for their cue to replicate Audrey Hepburn's nightclub dance number from "Funny Face".....
Everyone literally shakes off the gloom and gets happy, infused with the Toucan's virus.......(Patient Zero, the Toucan himself, really has it bad - his dialogue appears in comic-book bubbles, giving this poor bird an extra Hollywood-enforced sparkle.....)
But this state of affairs, (people giving up booze and cigarettes in their new found euphoria) doesn't sit well with the Powers-That-Be.......such as the New York Mayor (John McMartin, spiffed out like NYC's real dapper mayor John Lindsay) and a preening, oily Presidential Advisor, played to the hilt by Dom DeLuise.
They isolate the virus (which, caught in the microscope, has a dreamy smile on its face....a nice touch) and proceed to try cures on Peppard and Moore on their honeymoon night. Honest.
We swear we're not making any of this up as we write it. Even exerting our best efforts to describe it all, nothing can duplicate the sheer insanity of watching it unfold.......
And the film also serves as a farewell to New York City depicted as a romantic comedy playground. The 1970's loom right around the corner and soon filmmakers will treat the Big Apple as more like an urban Hell-On-Earth......("The French Connection", "The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three")
Looking back at it, in its totality its as much of an unearthly fantasy as anything in '2001. And that's why it'll live forever in our heart.....3 stars (***).........where else can you see a team of doctors try to place an anesthesia mask over a Toucan's beak?
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