Make Mine Mink (1960)

recommended

One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely the worst movie.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Make Mine Mink (1960)This has such an affected style—even in British terms, with an extreme use of accents and affectations, it seems to me—it's tiring. It's a comedy, so this is the worst of offences. Is it funny—I suppose so. In fact, I bet that some people absolutely die watching this. But I tried three times and found the style so forced and, well, stupid, that I never liked it. But is it funny? Yes, in a madcap way. But it's not really funny lines or clever comments, plays on words and whatnot. It's more the way things are delivered that matters, and that is largely a matter of whether you can adopt the style of speaking here or not. The plot, if you can call it quite a plot, is a matter of some bumbling blokes and gals who have decided to commit a crime. They get away with it, sort of, but are out of sorts and perplexed by the situation they are now in—the guilty! In all this is a parlor room story, a play adapted to the stage. So it's constrained from the get-go. My advice is simple—give it ten minutes. If you like it, and can stand the unbearable lead male (Terry-Thomas), you might make it to the end. If not, run, and fast!

I thought I might have seen it before but it wasn't until the cute maid, Billie Whitelaw, flung herself on the couch and her nightgown flew open to reveal her shapely legs that I recognized a scene. None of the other scenes seem to have registered much.The slightly batty Athene Seyler runs a boarding house in London. Her guests include Terry-Thomas, Hattie Jacques, and Elspeth Duxbury. Billie Whitelaw is excluded from the gang that the others decide to form in the name of charity.It's intermittently amusing. The Brits were making some superlative comedies during the 50s. They could turn a crummy, smoggy factory setting into a huge joke, as they did with "The Man in the White Suit." "Make Mine Mink" depends more on obvious puns, faux pas, and obvious awkward situations. A woman is trying to light a smoke bomb and it blows up in her hands, leaving her pop eyed and in blackface. How can this compare with the explosion scenes in the Guiness movie? I suppose it shouldn't. Nothing can match the best of the Ealing comedies. This should be compared to the "Carry On" series. It comes off better because it's not quite so silly. The other great tradition in British comedy -- the Monty Python series -- I leave to the philosophers.It's sometimes funny, occasionally frantic, as the repetitious musical theme tells us over and over. It's diverting without being in any way memorable. To compare it to "The Lady Killers" is a sacrilege.

As some people would say, this is good film for a rainy night, but I don't understand all the rave reviews about it."Make Mine Mink" looks like an episode of a television series where the same cast is used in different histories. I think that for really enjoying this kind of film it helps being familiar with the actors (and their former/later works). For instance, a reviewer had a lot of fun in seeing "a stunning, long-haired blond, high-heeled Hattie Jacques" and another reviewer says "Terry-Thomas is cast out of his usual flash, boisterous role as the rather timid Major Rayne" and so on.There's also the cultural/national factor. British humor can be difficult to understand in other countries. In my case, I like the sophisticated British humor that is present in many films, even in those that could not be labeled as comedy. "The Servant", for instance, presents a more sarcastic, cruel humor, that I appreciate as well.But "Make Mine Mink" belongs to the category of television humor, not quite so refined. It has a good story, with a strong theatrical flavor, very dependent on the charisma of the actors (so beloved by the audience, as the reviews prove). Anyway, one can feel that the actors are at ease and are given opportunities to improvise.All in all, "Make Mine Kink" is a mildly funny film but no more than that.

Oddball British humor is as quirky as it gets in MAKE MINE MINK about a former military man (TERRY-THOMAS) who organizes an unlikely band of fur thieves in order to help fund an orphanage. It's screwball farce on the highest level, as only the British could do in the '60s about seniors in a rooming house who decide to spice up their lives by joining a robbery plan that goes awry.Within a half-hour of various pranks involving a discarded mink coat, the eccentric roomers of a London boarding house decide to go in on a scheme of stealing fur coats to fund their favorite charity. A sub-plot develops involving BILLIE WHITELAW and a young policeman. She's reluctant to become his sweetheart because she has a police record and it could hurt his career. He scoffs at the idea. She, of course, knows nothing about the roomers' plans.The plot deals amusingly with all of the bungled fur robberies and the interplay between the eccentric boarding house characters who adopt different disguises for every robbery. One of the most amusing sequences has Terry-Thomas believing he's stumbled upon a den of thieves and fences so he can sell some of the stolen goods--until he realizes the patrons are all members of the Salvation Army.The fun is in the role playing and the clever script. It's played to the hilt by an ingratiating cast and ends on an ironic note after the burglar ring has sworn that they've committed their last crime.Summing up: Mindless fun all the way.