The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Am I Missing Something?

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT is very much a typical Doris Day comedy and okay if you're into that particular genre. Once again Day teams up with the great and laconic Rod Taylor (after their successful pairing in PILLOW TALK) for a spy-flavoured comedy in which a budding romance between the stars is complicated by the revelation that Day may or may not be a Russian spy. The story feels plodding at times with the comedy dated more often than not, but it picks up in the second half for a good party set-piece and a string of character actors tend to steal the laughs from the leads. Watch out for Robert Vaughn's cameo, the funniest part of the film for me.

This is a fantastic movie! I had heard of the title, and had it on my list of must-gets, even though I had never actually watched it before. I finally picked it up for $1.00 in a charity shop. This is exactly the kind of picture that I enjoy; a great cast in a romantic comedy, with lots of laugh-out-loud antics thrown in. I was surprised at how good Rod Taylor is in this. He's not my favourite actor, but he and Doris have great chemistry in this movie, and they are ably assisted by the likes of Paul Lynde, Dom DeLuise, Edward Andrews, John McGiver, and Dick Martin thrown in for good measure. With those names on the bill you already know that you're in for a heck of a treat, but this picture goes above and beyond! There's slapstick galore throughout, and it's almost as though Frank Tashlin said "Now, Doris and Rod, you say your lines, and these other guys are just going to do their thing and you just go with it, and I'm going to keep rolling, o.k.?" I mean, I know that there was a script, but it just feels as though sometimes they threw it away!! The movie is fast-paced, witty, sometimes predictable, but always wonderfully entertaining. Paul Lynde is such a crack-up that you can imagine the whole cast and crew falling about in hysterics many times over while filming this. There are also several appearances by the familiar face of Alice Pearce who plays her usual nosey neighbour character, as she does in many of Doris's movies. I love this picture, and it is now one of my favourites!! I think you will like it too. It's a great movie for the whole family from a time when Hollywood made great pictures! Pity they don't make good stuff like this now! 10/10.

Funny Doris Day vehicle made memorable with Rod Taylor as her co-star and a terrific ensemble of supporting players-Dick Martin, Dom De Luise, Eric Fleiming, Ed Andrews and Miss Alice Pearce along with Ellen Corby.This is essentially a spy caper and Doris is the prime suspect. The only one who believes her innocence is her boss and new lover, Rod Taylor.My only objection to the movie was the casting of Arthur Godfrey as her father. Godfrey belonged in the same league as Mel Gibson, and they certainly could have gotten a person to play the father role.Day is really original here as she assumes the role of a "klutzy" woman caught up in mayhem. The scenes in the kitchen of the future, on board a motorboat and others are uproarious in laughter.Sadly, the film marked the end of cancer stricken Alice Pearce, who died shortly after making the film, as well as the tragic passing of villain Eric Fleming in a drowning accident off Peru shortly after the film. This film showed the technological advances that were to come years later. They certainly used these advances to their benefit to poke fun of the society that would make them.

I say eventually because it takes about three quarters of the film before it appears to have a thought in its head, and even then it's not by much and only briefly. My problem with the movie is that for the vast majority of it, Doris Day's character Jenny is the typical stupid blonde, cheerfully grinning like a moron and twirling her hair, clueless to what is going on around her. I have a hard time getting over this kind of thing when I see it in the movies because I dated one or two girls that acted like that because they thought it was cute and it drives me out of my mind.It's incredible to me that the romance between Jenny and Mr. Templeton was ever considered romantic, it's so contrived and pretentious. The slapstick situations are shallowly manufactured, badly acted and thus not funny, but the heavy hand of the sixties is all over the movie, so at least it is a slightly interesting look at a different time as well as the kind of thing that was considered entertaining and romantic forty years ago. The movie takes a turn for the better when Jenny figures out what's going on by listening in on a phone call between Templeton and his military buddies and then decides to turn the tables on them, although it should be noted that during that phone call he insists that Jenny simply can't be a spy, she hasn't got the brains. She's offended and so are we, until we remember that he's right. Afterwards, she begins to display an intellect which had been largely absent thus far, but unfortunately, everyone else in the movie turns stupid in order to lead to a lot more goofy slapstick. It is telling that one of the first things that brings suspicion onto Jenny is a series of misunderstandings stemming from the fact that her dog's name is Vladimir. Strangely enough, the reason I watched the movie is because I took my girlfriend to Catalina Island recently for her birthday, and we took a tour in the exact same glass bottom boat which was used in this movie, and I thought it would be interesting to see the film shot in the boat I was sitting in, as well as to see what the astonishingly beautiful Avalon (the tiny town on Catalina Island) looked like in the mid 1960s. Needless to say, I was surprised to see that Avalon looks almost exactly the same, and that the glass bottom boat appears in the first five minutes or so of the movie and is never seen again. Odd that they would name the film after such an irrelevant plot device. Also don't miss the extra features on the DVD, one of which is a short video in which MGM claims that every girl's dream is to visit the MGM Studios in Culver City.