Boeing, Boeing
Living in Paris, journalist Bernard has devised a scheme to keep three fiancées: Lufthansa, Air France and British United. Everything works fine as long as they only come home every third day. But when there's a change in their working schedule, they will be able to be home every second day instead. Bernard's carefully structured life is breaking apart
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- Cast:
- Jerry Lewis , Tony Curtis , Thelma Ritter , Christiane Schmidtmer , Dany Saval , Suzanna Leigh
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Reviews
To me, this movie is perfection.
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Excellent but underrated film
Boeing Boeing is known primarily today as the film where Jerry Lewis stepped out of his schnook character and played a lead role in a Sixties sex comedy. Jerry does all right in expanding his range on this one, but the whole thing itself is not the greatest these type of films ever. It's more of a warmed over version of The Tender Trap than anything else with Lewis playing not quite so second a banana to Tony Curtis as David Wayne did with Frank Sinatra.Curtis has a great little operation going over at his place, he's got three fiancés, all airline stewardesses working at different airlines who live at his rather sumptuous bachelor pad in Paris. He keeps complete track of the schedule of Dany Saval for Air France, Christine Schmidtmer for Lufthansa, and Susanna Leigh for British Airways. But one fine day schedules change. Not only that, but an old rival Jerry Lewis comes into town and watches in amazement.I'm still trying to figure out just how Tony Curtis could afford the living quarters he was in together with live-in maid Thelma Ritter who helps him keep the pretenses up. Just how a Jewish maid from Queens got to be living in Paris is also a mystery. All this mind you is on a reporter's salary and no one said that Curtis was Carl Bernstein.Good thing he could afford her because Thelma Ritter as usual is the best thing in the film despite the statuesque proportions of the ladies involved. Especially Schmidtmer as Ritter caustically commented.In his memoirs Tony Curtis says he liked making Boeing Boeing and thinks highly of Jerry Lewis as a person and comedian. He also said Lewis even when not doing his usual shtick in a film was still the greatest scene stealer on the planet with whom he had to stay constantly alert.It's not a bad comedy, some will find it incredibly sexist for their taste. It does suffer by comparison to The Tender Trap.
A prime example of cookie-cutter 60's sex comedy. Tired, banal, limp, lukewarm, strenuously forced drivel who's only source of real humor is the wonderful Thelma Ritter, and the laughs she gets come much more from her persona than from the dry well of the script she had to work with. Curtis tries, but his efforts are in vain. Lewis is actually quite good in a very restrained performance, which is a shame in that it's wasted in this wasteland. None of the characters, save Ritter's, behave in a fashion even beginning to resemble a human being, let alone an intelligent human being. The resulting "humor" is numbingly artificial and contrived. In an outlandish situation genuine humor comes from realistic reactions and behavior. Something you need not expect from the cartoons that populate this sad, inane excuse for comedy.
I first saw "Boeing Boeing" almost exactly a year ago when it came on TV, and I must say that I was delightfully surprised. While it was no comedy masterpiece, it still offered many genuinely amusing moments. The pairing of Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis worked perfectly and it was interesting to see Thelma Ritter (who appeared in Hitchcock's "Rear Window") as the over-employed housekeeper.Good entertainment, if you can ignore its staginess (the film takes place almost entirely in one apartment).
When the opening credits run, and the supporting female cast members measurements' are shown beneath their names, you have no doubt you're in the 60's, bedroom farce, defined. In a role reversal of sorts Jerry Lewis plays straight man to Tony Curtis this time around .Bernie Lawrence (Curtis) is an American newspaper man stationed in Paris, the man for whom there is never too many airline hostesses, just too little time. His delicately balanced, and timed to the minute, 4-way love life comes totally unwound when old pal Robert Reed (Lewis) arrives for an unexpected stay.Cliché after cliché, time stamped in most every shot, Boeing Boeing is a tribute to a different type of filmmaking than we see today, a different morality, a different approach to comedy.Wonderful Paris sights are an added treat. Recommended.