The Little Prince (1974)

          Although I managed to pass through childhood without any exposure to the story, I’ve learned that French author/aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s fantastical novella The Little Prince is one of the most successful and widely read children’s stories of the 20th century. I mention this by way of stating that I approached this film adaptation without any feelings toward the source material, so others can hold forth on whether the picture does justice to de Saint-Exupéry’s writing. Watching the film of The Little Prince as its own entity, I found little to like despite the imaginative narrative and worthwhile themes. Director Stanley Donen, a giant of studio-era musical films whose career was winding down when he made The Little Prince, brings a fair amount of style in the form of clever fisheye-lens photography and general exuberance, but the combination of coldly professional acting by the leading players and distractingly artificial settings for many scenes makes the piece feel perfunctory rather than passionate.

          It’s also not a good sign that when famed choreographer-director Bob Fosse shows up in a rare acting role, he completely takes over the film for several minutes with his signature brand of cinematic and physical movement; although merely credited as choreographer for his own sequence, Fosse likely had a hand in the design of camera shots and editing, as well, and his bit is the liveliest stretch of the movie.

          Anyway, the story of The Little Prince must lose something in translation, because as presented onscreen, it’s insipid. When a character known only as the Pilot (Richard Kiley) lands his plane in the Sahara after experiencing engine trouble, he meets a strange young boy, the Little Prince (Steven Warner), who claims to have come from an asteroid in outer space. The Little Prince regales the Pilot with tales of his encounters with strange characters, including a friendly Fox (Gene Wilder), a demanding Rose (Donna McKechnie), and a pernicious Snake (Fosse). Each encounter taught the Little Prince a lesson, and so does his friendship with the Pilot.

          As communicated through twee songs by the famed duo of Alan Jay Lerner (who also wrote the screenplay) and Frederick Loewe (who also composed the score), the Little Prince’s adventure says something about the importance of retaining a child’s innocence even in adult life. Yet while the content is admirable, the execution is blah. Exterior daytime scenes in the desert are visually dull, nighttime exterior scenes shot on a soundstage are phony-looking, and the tricks Donen uses to simulate outer-space environments are gimmicky. Yet it’s ultimately the performances that keep The Little Princefrom achieving liftoff. Kiley, a lovely actor with a resonant voice, is too theatrical, and young Steven Warner comes across as an automaton doing what he’s told. So, even with Fosse’s dynamic dance sequence and Wilder’s touchy-feely extended cameo, there’s little heart in what should be a deeply moving parable.

The Little Prince: FUNKY

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)

          An oddity among Woody Allen’s early films, this picture comprises a series of comic sketches rather than a feature-length narrative—and though Allen’s career is filled with genius quickies, from one-liners to short stories to his hilarious contribution to the 1989 anthology film New York Stories, this movie doesn’t consistently represent his best work. The picture has wonderful moments, of course, and it’s mildly amusing from start to finish, but it ebbs considerably at times, and the lack of a narrative through-line makes the whole thing feel a bit disposable. The movie is based on Dr. David Reuben’s nonfiction bestseller Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), which was credited with broadening the number of sex-related subjects everyday Americans discussed without embarrassment.
          Prior to each of the movie’s seven sections, Allen presents a sex-related question via onscreen text, and then follows the question with a silly comic episode offering a possible answer to the question. Sometimes, Allen scores simply by being outrageous, like the “What is Sodomy?” section featuring a doctor (Gene Wilder) romancing a sheep—the combination of Allen’s sly dialogue and Wilder’s deadpan delivery produces goofy fun. Elsewhere, Allen gets carried away with discursive flourishes such as parodies of well-known film styles; the fact that he slows down the movie to spoof Italian neorealist drama, low-budget science fiction, and even Shakespearean adaptations indicates how far Allen was stretching for material. Another distracting element is Allen’s sporadic onscreen presence. He stars in the first and last segments, as well as two others, so the implied joke of dweeby Allen dominating a movie about sex is diluted. Plus, as was Allen’s cinematic wont at the time, he falls back on childish slapstick when he can’t muster verbal gags, so the tone of the movie fluctuates between cartoonish and sophisticated.

          Having said all that, the picture is worth watching if only for the final sequence, “What Happens During Ejaculation?” Representing Allen’s wit at its most mischievous, the sequence imagines the interior of a human brain as a military-style command center, with an uptight Operator (Tony Randall) calling the shots while body parts perform necessary functions. As the scene progresses, the Operator and his sidekick (Burt Reynolds) organize an army of sperm for deployment into a sex partner’s vagina—and one of the sperm “soldiers” is a nervous dork (Allen) who wonders if he’ll succeed in fertilizing an egg or simply die during the “invasion.” The sight of Allen in a ridiculous costume—white jumpsuit with a comically round abdomen and a tail—is funny before Allen even speaks his first line, so listening to him fret about his impending suicide mission kicks the sequence into comic overdrive.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask): GROOVY

Thursday’s Game (1974)

          The first feature-length narrative written by Mary Tyler Moore Show guy James L. Brooks—who later conquered the big screen with Terms of Endearment (1983) and other films—the TV movie Thursday’s Game is a funny, insightful, and warm study of an everyman in crisis. Gene Wilder, operating at the height of his powers, plays Harry Evers, the producer of a low-rated daytime TV quiz show based in New York. For the past four years, Harry and his pal, clothier Marvin Ellison (Bob Newhart), have been part of a casual weekly poker game with several friends.

          One night, despite worries that his job is in danger, Harry agrees to make the game more exciting by playing for big cash, and he wins a major haul—only to have his “friends,” except for Marvin, say they’re unwilling to pay their debts. A fistfight ensues, which is an amusing spectacle because Newhart and Wilder look ridiculous trying to trade punches with fellow working stiffs, but Harry and Marvin bond during the brawl. Thus, they decide to continue meeting every Thursday for boys’ nights. Then, when the inevitable happens and Harry gets fired, he uses the Thursday getaways to escape home pressures once his wife, Lynn (Ellen Burstyn), starts pushing him to find another job or at least sign up for unemployment, which Harry considers humiliating.

          What unfolds from this relatable scenario is surprising and touching, because Harry goes nuts watching Marvin follow the opposite trajectory—Marvin achieves business success even as his marriage to Lois (Cloris Leachman) crumbles. Thursday’s Game plays to all of Brooks’ strengths, allowing the writer-producer to gently satirize careerism, male ego, marital politics, and other issues. Brooks clearly defines each character, even those who drift in and out of the story quickly, and his script is filled with great one-liners and memorable bits. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, Harry has an infuriating showdown with his agent (Rob Reiner), who reveals he didn’t actually know he was Harry’s agent during the last several years—even though he collected 10 percent of Harry’s salary the whole time.

          Director Robert Moore wisely stays out of Brooks’ way, letting the expert script and marvelous actors dominate. The cast is filled with people who made ’70s TV lively, including Norman Fell, Valerie Harper, and Nancy Walker in addition to those already mentioned, and each performer contributes a new, sardonic flavor to the mix. Wilder is wonderful, reeling back his tendency toward overacting but still providing a few of his signature slow-burn moments; Newhart strikes a droll balance of likeable insecurity and tentative swagger; and Burstyn grounds the film with a potent dramatic performance as a woman torn between devotion and the need for honesty. Particularly given its ignoble release—Thursday’s Game was shot in 1971 but not aired until 1974—this is a rewarding comedy that deserves to be seen by many more people.

Thursday’s Game: GROOVY

The Frisco Kid (1979)

The runaway success of Mel Brooks’ Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974) inspired many underwhelming imitators, including pictures by a handful of directors who should have known better. For instance, Robert Aldrich, whose career includes several great action films and melodramas, had no business helming an “outrageous” romp about a rabbi-turned-outlaw—although whether anyone could have made a watchable movie from this gimmicky premise is open to debate. Anyway, Blazing Saddles star Gene Wilder is Rabbi Avram Belinski, a wide-eyed rube who travels from Poland to America in order to assume his post as the leader of a San Francisco synagogue. After getting robbed by hooligans upon reaching the East Coast, Avram finds work on a railroad as a means of making his way West. This brings him into the orbit of Tommy Lillard (Harrison Ford), an outlaw who takes sympathy on the hapless traveler. They become unlikely companions for a series of what presumably were conceived as “wacky adventures.” In Aldrich’s hands, however, the episodes comprising The Frisco Kid are loud non-events, spasms of shouting and slapstick connected by exhaustingly exuberant music—the vignettes in look and feel like comedy without actually being funny. While much of the blame falls to Aldrich and his screenwriters for failing to summon inspiration, Wilder is complicit, too. Succumbing to his worst excesses, notably bulging his eyes at regular intervals and screaming most of his dialogue, Wilder presents such a broad caricature of Jewishness that he’s almost unbearable to watch, to say nothing of borderline offensive. This isn’t Wilder at his worst (alas, he was even more grating while acting in the first couple of movies he directed), but this sure ain’t Wilder at his best. As for Ford, caught in the post-Star Wars transitional period of his career, he doesn’t really have a character to portray, so he overcompensates with unearned intensity that doesn’t suit the comedic milieu.

The Frisco Kid: LAME