What's Up, Tiger Lily?

What's Up, Tiger Lily
1966 - American International
Directed By Woody Allen



SYNOPSIS

Woody Allen takes a swinging Japanese spy thriller, strips it of it's soundtrack. In its place, Allen and other actors dub new dialogue that involves several factions fighting over the ultimate egg salad recipe.



MY THOUGHTS

A bold experiment that doesn't quite deliver.

Woody Allen's first film did something that no other film had done, and few have done since. Stripping the dialogue off of an existing film was a great idea, but it could have used some more work on the new script.

The film's major flaw is its sense of humor. There are some big laughs from some one-liners in the dialogue but I'd say nearly 3/4 of the jokes fall flat. Not even snicker or smile generating. Some you don't know if they are jokes or just filler to match the actor's mouths.

Some of the film's titillation doesn't age all that well either because we're all desensitized to nudity, but the ladies are nice to look at.

Adding scenes featuring performances by the Lovin' Spoonful (not at their best) don't fit the Asian-centric film, but it's great to see a classic band in their prime.

The voice dubbing is well done, rarely do you get any voice/mouth mismatching that you'd see in some of the poor English dubs of Godzilla films.

The Japanese film (called International Secret Police: Key of Keys) looks like it might be interesting on it's own. It seemed to have a campy James Bond rip-off quality that made the 60's Italian spy film "Danger: Diabolik" so much fun.

But this film tends to be tedious in some places... and ultimately it pales in comparison to later superior works like "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and Woody Allen's films to come.