To me, this movie is perfection.

Pretty Good

Great Film overall

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Woody Allen is a funny guy. He has written some great lines for film and print. But in the early years of his cinematic career, he wrote a few films that might be called juvenile. This is one of those films."What's New, Pussycat?" feels like the convergence of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." It has a wonderful cast, but if you want to see Romy Schneider, Capucine, Peter Sellers, Peter O'Toole or Woody Allen himself, there are better films that showcase their talents. I hope the cast had plenty of fun making this romp, so there is justification for its existence. Otherwise, I find it to a tiresome, unoriginal sequence of scenes done better elsewhere.The plot is thin, concerning the central character, Michael James (Peter O'Toole), who is a womanizer. He is lucky enough to have beautiful women drop into his lap, but most of them are hopeless flirts, nymphomaniacs and one-dimensional parodies of the 60's liberated woman. Good bedroom farces don't need wacky music to be funny and are based upon more than people inconveniently bumping into each other.The film is not a total waste. There are a few really good lines. And it is populated with plenty of female beauty. But it would be a few years yet until Woody Allen would write his best work. "What's New Pussycat?" was his first filmic venture. "Sleeper" would follow eight years later in 1973. In 1977, his writing talent would take a substantial leap with "Annie Hall."

Why perfect? Well it's not the editing, the chase scene at the end looks like Edward Scissorhands did the cutting. It's not the acting - with everyone from Diana Dors to Ursula Andress performing the most outlandish caricatures you could ever imagine. It's also not the effects nor the story - as both are simple, almost too a fault. So why is this film perfect? Here's why. Firstly the film allows truly great performers to perform. Scenes between Peter Sellers and either Peter O'Toole or Woody Allen highlight just how funny truly gifted comedians can be when a camera is on them. There are parts when obviously the script just said "do something insane and funny" and of course they obliged. Secondly it's the setting. Paris of the sixties is shown as sexy and yet innocent, beautiful women in beautiful locations without the connotations that this brings now. It is a Europe of memory - free and swinging and yet chic and fabulous. O'Toole is charming and ultimately suspends disbelief as a foppish playboy desperately trying to use an psychoanalysis to get over his gift of seducing women so he can settle down with his girlfriend. Allen plays the same guy that I love in "Play it Again Sam" albeit a youthful version and Seller's is at his best. Thirdly it is the nostalgia it brings where comedies had ample slapstick. Seller's is in pure Clouseau mode and the wonderful scenes in his group therapy again poke fun at mental illness in a way that could not be done now. The support from Capucine and Paula Prentiss is wonderful. They are so wonderfully politically incorrect (a nymphomaniac and a serial suicide attempter). They play pure sex-objects that are never pure sex objects (if that contradiction makes sense) and deliver and heighten the comedy of the movie. This film is perfect because it could never be made again now. It is a piece of perfect art of a happier time delivered to us by funny great actors. Enjoy it for what it is.

During the '60's, the late Clive Donner made several modish comedies, of which 'What's New Pussycat' is probably the best known because it marked the acting/writing debut of Woody Allen. Its theme - 20th century Man's never-ending preoccupation with sex - is one Allen returned to in later films. Peter O'Toole plays 'Michael James', editor of Parisian fashion magazine 'Chic'. Everywhere he goes, incredibly beautiful women are willing to leap into his bed. He wants to marry the lovely Carole ( Romy Schneider ), but cannot bring himself to propose because he faces too much temptation. He goes to psychiatrist Dr.Fritz Fassbinder ( Peter Sellers ). The good doctor is madder than many of his patients. Envious of Michael's way with women, he begs him to help him bed a patient called Renee Lefebvre ( Capucine )...Anyone familiar with Woody's later movies might be startled on viewing 'Pussycat' for the first time. It is a film Woody later came to despise, mainly because his script was altered by the stars, particularly O'Toole and Sellers. As well as exploiting the myth of Paris as the 'sex capital of the world', there is a 'Goon Show' flavour to some of the humour; at a strip club, Michael finds Fassbinder in the audience. Embarrassed, the doctor says he followed him there. When Michael points out that he was there already, Fassbinder says: "I followed you fast'.". Woody originally wanted the film to be more like a Marx Brothers romp, and wrote the part of 'Fassbinder' with Groucho in mind. Producer Charles K.Feldman had other ideas. Sellers was a hot property in the States thanks to 'Dr.Strangelove' and other pictures. Clad in a reject Nana Mouskouri wig and sporting a bogus Teutonic accent, he virtually shouts his way through the script. It is not one of his finest hours. O'Toole is miscast, bringing a heavy hand to what should have been a light role. It is hard to see why all these women find him so attractive ( and no, I'm not saying that out of jealousy! ). The main laughs come from Woody himself as Michael's geeky chum 'Victor Shakapopolis', who works in the local strip club dressing the girls before they go on stage. "Ten francs a week", he tells an astonished Michael. "That's not much!". Victor replies: "Its all I can afford!". In a very funny scene, Victor is with Carole ( whom he hopes to bed ) in a library when a thug snatches away her book. Victor sets about trying to teach the thug a lesson. Another has Michael and Carole having a row at the language school where she works, and the class start repeating their insults in the belief it is part of the lesson. Here we get a glimpse of the Allen comedies to come, such as 'Take The Money & Run' and 'Bananas'. Also good is Paula Prentiss as neurotic stripper 'Liz Bien' ( think about that name for a second ) who keeps trying to kill herself every five minutes. Her strip tease routine is genuinely erotic and thrilling ( though we see nothing we shouldn't! )Things To Look Out For - a walk-on from O'Toole's 'Becket' co-star - Richard Burton!With its distinctive Richard Williams Studios credits, Tom Jones theme song ( other numbers in the film were by Dionne Warwick and Manfred Mann ) by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, the film was a massive hit. But for my money it comes across as forced, with everyone enjoying themselves a bit too much. The finale takes place at Château Chantelle, and has the cast chasing each other Tom & Jerry style, culminating in a go-kart scene that seems to be there only because someone thought a go-kart chase would liven up the film at that point. If Allen's ideas had been adhered to, the whole thing might have been better. Nevertheless, it is interesting from a historical perspective as an early example of the trendy sex comedy. It could not have been made five years earlier.Popping up near the end ( she parachutes into Michael's car ) is Ursula Andress - the first 'Bond' girl - as 'Rita'. She, along with Sellers, O'Toole and Allen, reunited for Feldman's next production - the even more outrageous 'Casino Royale'.

Watching Peter Sellers playing a lust-crazed German shrink amid gorgeous women, Swinging-Sixties ambiance, and a sparkling Burt Bacharach score should make for a fast-flowing breeze. But herky-jerky direction and a surprisingly amateurish script by first-time filmwriter and actor Woody Allen render "What's New Pussycat" hard to take.Billed a sex farce when it came out in 1965, and rather ahead of its time in that regard, the film presents us with the singular torment of Michael James (Peter O'Toole), a prisoner of his killer charisma who wants to be faithful to lover Carole (Romy Schneider) but can't say no to the many felines who purr for his attention. His analyst Dr. Fassbender (Sellers) and friend Victor (Allen) watch in jealous rage.Sellers was just coming off a near-fatal heart attack, and maybe trying too hard to show he still had game. As Fassbender he leaps, shrieks, rolls on the carpet, yet still seems half the man he was in films like "Waltz Of The Toreadors" and "The Millionairess". He's amusing but underrealized with lines that stretch for laughs he doesn't always get. "You're a monster, and a monster in that order," he bellows at his heavy-set wife. Huh?O'Toole was a sensation at this time from more serious roles; seeing him cut up like this, slamming his skull against doors and slipping off stairs, was a revelation and a marker for later comic turns in better films. Here, he struggles with a role conceived for Warren Beatty, looking almost constipated as one lovely after another drapes herself over him. "Women have always overcome my basic shyness," he explains.Allen was the new guy here, and for that you almost want to cut him some slack. He could have done worse for a first script, like say "Stardust Memories" or "Hollywood Ending". But watching Woody trying to be funny can be almost as painful as watching him try to be serious. "This can't work," he has one early conquest tell Michael. "I'm 34 and you're 12."A more central problem than the three mentioned above were two others behind the camera. Director Clive Donner kills some of the funnier bits with lame blocking (an opening featuring Fassbinder and his wife arguing in a series of dizzying zoom shots sets the chaotic tone) and allows O'Toole to be lit so green at times he appears malarial.Producer Charles K. Feldman seemed more interested in creating "happenings" than films, throwing together talents at random and letting whatever they came up with dictate the final product. In one scene we watch a badly overacting Allen try to kill O'Toole in a sauna, yet the next scene has O'Toole alive and dry in an unrelated group-psychoanalysis scene. I can't write about the ending, not because it would be a spoiler, but because I have no idea what it was about. Neither will you.There's a handful of witty lines in "Pussycat", sometimes even two in a row. That Bacharach/Hal David music is tremendous listening. Tom Jones scored the hit title song, but the songs "Here I Am" (Dionne Warwick) and "My Little Red Book" (Manfred Mann) are even better, the latter especially when danced to by the gorgeous Paula Prentiss.Prentiss is the most beautiful woman I've seen in movies - until she opens her mouth. You could say that "Pussycat" suffers from a similar issue, pretty from a distance, annoying close-up. It has so much sex appeal, it's almost angering how casually it disappoints.