Truly Dreadful Film

The Worst Film Ever

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Blistering performances.

'What A Way To Go' is one of those quirky comedies of the 60's that probably wouldn't work today, although it certainly did back then! Shirley MacLaine never looked lovelier as the girl who just dreams of a simple life, yet finishes up with riches beyond her dreams, because of the men she marries, who, apart from Robert Mitcham, start off poor, but somehow manage to make millions, then die from their obsession with money! Among the husbands, Dick Van Dyke, Robert Mitcham, Paul Newman, Gene Kelly, and, Dean Martin, not to mention the always marvellous Robert Cummings as Shirley's psychiatrist! An all star fun romp, not to be analysed, just sit back and enjoy the ride, and let these masters of their craft do their thing!

I've just watched "What a Way to Go!" and I must confess I was seduced by its cast for some time, and that was the reason why I've wanted to watch it. By the end of the screening, I was a little disappointed perhaps more due to its dull plot than to anything else: Shirley Maclaine plays Louise May Foster, the heiress of a inheritance of more than 200 million dollars who intends to donate all of it to the government. Before she donates it she goes to a psychologist (Robert Cummings) and tells him where all this money comes from: from her ex-husbands, who turned out to die from unexpected (but at the same time funny) causes, all of them in the peak of their careers; a new millionaire who was Loiuse's first love and became her first husband (Dick Van Dyke); a painter(Paul Newman) that she met in Paris and that got rich selling paintings created by his own machinery; a fancy tycoon (Robert Mitchum) and a singer (Gene Kelly) who has got rich getting into the movie business. The only guy she dumped in her life was a spoiled businessman (Dean Martin), that she happens to meet again later on in the movie. Although its a high-quality production, with good moments (the comparisons that Louise makes about her relationships to different ages in the film history are the highlight), the result is a few laughs, and a feeling that such good actors were miscasted (Newman, Mitchum, Martin) maybe except for Gene Kelly, that steals the movie at the moment he is on it. By the end, the feeling is: it could be funnier and bolder. It is not.

This frothy thing is a charming movie (script by Comden and Green) and lots of fun. Shirley MacLaine is the strictly brought-up, naive cutie pie who manages unwittingly to marry a series of hopelessly poor men, each of whom becomes fabulously wealthy. We're talking big names too -- Dean Martin, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, et al -- not all of whom are associated with successful comedies.Her first love, in their dusty little town, is the hapless Dick Van Dyke who is perfectly content to spend his time fishing and reading Thoreau, while the arrogant Dean Martin lords it over Van Dyke and everyone else. MacClaine chooses to marry Van Dyke, perhaps partly because he's so abjectly mired in poverty, just to frustrate her mother who has advised her that "money is the root of all." Van Dyke suffers a road-to-Damascus experience and builts his shabby hardware store into a monstrously successful supermarket, then drops dead from the effort, leaving MacClaine a mountain of money. The pattern holds through her subsequent marriages.Well, I suppose Mitchum doesn't start out poor. He starts out fabulously wealthy, a Howard Hughes figure, distant and stern. But he warms to MacClaine, sells off his business enterprises and retires to a little farm with her. He celebrates his retirement with a few hayseed neighbors, gets a little drunk, and tries to milk the bull instead of the cow. "Melrose! FORGIVE ME!", he howls before being kicked for a field goal. He leaves her millions.In some ways the funniest and most satiric episode involves Newman as a Paris taxi driver who is an insane painter filled with contempt for bourgeois morality and greed. He lives in a shabby studio apartment in which a dozen large crane-like arms with paint brushes on the ends are activated by his "sonic palette." Newman bangs drums, operates jack hammers, and makes other random noises and the brushes slap away randomly at a large canvas. The painting are worth nothing. However, MacClaine accidentally activates the brushes by playing a record of Mendelssohn's "Spring Song." Newman has an epiphany while gawking at the brushes now oscillating in harmony. He now begins to produce machine-processed painting by playing classical music and jazz. They're no longer "his" work, although he runs around in a frenzy with a conductor's baton. The value of his paintings soars. They soar even more after the machines conspire to beat him to death. I can only think of one other movie, "The Prize", in which Newman has been in the least funny, fine dramatic actor that he is. He throws himself into the role of mad artist with amazing gusto.I guess I won't go on with this because, as must be evident, the plot has a lot of characters and is a mosaic of sub-plots. Let me add that, in some prints, in a scene in which MacClaine and Mitchum enter a ballroom in evening clothes, she does a pirouette and drops to her knees, at which point her bodice slips a little, but just enough. I only add that for the pre-verts among us. There was no joy in it for me. I've never had an impure thought.

With eye candy galore, this movie is funny, funny, funny! It starts out with the a widow on the couch, explaining to the psychiatrist why she does not want her fortune.A simple lady, who just wanted to live on love, for some reason whomever she marries, becomes insanely driven, filthy rich workaholics, that work themselves to early graves with hilarious results.The costume designer had lots of fun, working with thirty-year-old Shirley Maclaine at her physical peak.It looked like the entire cast had a blast. It was fun to watch A-list actors clown around.Does Louisa May ever find what she is searching for? You have to watch this light hearted black comedy (an oxymoron yet an apt description of the movie) and find out.