Get To Know Your Rabbit (1972) Brian DePalma was only just beginning to make his reputation as a director to watch, due to his raggedy, freewheeling satires "Greetings" and "Hi Mom!".....(think of them as the Jurassic Era versions of 'Saturday Night Live'....)
Maybe the idea of making one of these fly-by-night, skit and gag filled farces for a major studio like Warner Brothers appealed to his young-rebel nature.
It never occurred to him that lampooning corporate America under the auspices of an actual corporation was an oxymoron, an impossible contradiction. And the WB corporate morons, who maybe didn't get the jokes or the way DePalma was filming them, kicked him off the movie.
What's left is a wrecked mess of a comedy whose script, a precious, self-satisfied collection of lame satirical stabs, was never that funny to begin with.
Ironically, the film featured an of-the-moment leading man, Tom Smothers, the deadpan comedic half of the Smothers Brothers jokey folk-singing duo. The liberal brothers peppered their CBS variety show with anti-Vietnam War attitudes, which led the nervous network to cancel them. So the blank-faced Tom Smothers seemed a perfect choice to play a corporate drone who ditches the business suit to lead the life of a tapdancing magician who plays strip clubs. (No, we didn't make any of this up.)
Amid all the skits, lines and labored situations that fall dead at your feet here, you can still spot some remaining DePalma flourishes - a split-screen gag to start off with and some lengthy overhead shots.
The rest of it is beyond painful, including an endless bit with Allen Garfield as a manic obsessed brassiere salesman and Orson Welles as Smothers' mentor-instructor in tap dancing and cornball magic tricks.(As you might an imagine, Welles trudges through the film like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world.....)
Halfway into the film, the sweet, luminous Katherine Ross (of "The Graduate") shows up, billed only as 'Terrific Looking Girl' (Come to think of it, that role name could easily have been applied to almost every 20-something actress in films of the 60's and 70's.)
After all of its obvious targets are duly pounded on with dull satiric sledgehammers, "Get To Know Your Rabbit" grinds to a halt......and whatever anarchic spirit Brian DePalma tried to contribute ti it get flattened under the WB steamroller.
Rarely seen, rarely thought of, and rare to find as well. For good reason. Zero stars (0).
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