John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely Brilliant!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Blistering performances.

I wouldn't have thought it possible for a film with a cast like this to be so unfunny, and director J. Lee Thompson not surprisingly never made another comedy again (unless you count 'The Greek Tycoon'). It was reckless to invite comparisons with the likes of 'The Kid Brother' and 'Horse Feathers' by ending with a slapstick football match, and the lawsuit against the film brought by Notre Dame is the one authentically hilarious thing about this turkey.Peter Ustinov tearing about on his golf scooter anticipates the less amusing moments from 'The Monkees' and 'The Banana Splits' (with appropriately clunking musical accompaniment by the overrated 'Johnny' Williams); while his character is a depressing harbinger of all those comedy foreigners he would later play in lousy films over the next quarter of a century.Despite having recently scripted the greatest Clouseau film of them all, 'A Shot in the Dark' (1964), William Peter Blatty truly laid an egg with this tasteless mishmash of leering sex farce and Cold War satire published by him as a novel in 1963. His script contrives to namedrop the likes of T.S. Eliot and Christopher Marlowe but is nothing like as clever as it seems to think it is, and has something to offend everyone.Since it was produced by her own husband Steve Parker, Shirley MacLaine presumably must shoulder some of the blame of making a film so archaically politically incorrect. One of its few saving graces, however, is that it hails from the days before she began taking herself very seriously and was still quite charmingly unaffected (witness the gutsy way she belts out the absurd title song); although much of the time she bizarrely seems to be still wearing the pancake makeup she wore in 'My Geisha'.

John Goldfarb, Please Come Home is a movie that the whole family can watch and will appeal to older children until the age of 14 and adults 30 and up. Those in-between might not enjoy it as much. It is an amusing movie with little plot. The acting is good. The humor is good and old school. It is a prime time movie. However, there is little substance to the movie. Yet, there is not supposed to be any, just funny. There are a lot of good actors/actresses in the movie to make it funny and serious enough to stay funny and silly. Laughter is the best medicine, or so they say -- so enjoy this medicine for the soul. It is a crazy film. Bring plenty of popcorn and family or friends to enjoy this old school funny movie. No depth, no substance, just crazy laughter.

"It's the happiest, wackiest, zaniest comedy you'll ever see!" screamed the tagline on the British poster for this manic '60s movie. As far as mis-selling a product goes, this has to be one of the most misleading claims in the history of cinema. Happy? Wacky? Zany? Comedy? There are only nine words in the entire tagline, and four of them are completely untrue! John Goldfarb, Please Come Home is a complete disaster from start to finish, an embarrassment for its stars and director, and a film that will leave viewers shaking their head in disbelief and asking one very pertinent question: how could this much talent serve up something this awful? Once-trailblazing journalist Jenny Ericson (Shirley Maclaine) is on the verge of being ditched by Strife magazine. Her pizazz has gone; her eye for a great story has deserted her. Her one shot at redemption comes when she decides to go undercover in the Middle Eastern country of Fawzia, working to expose the sleazy happenings in the harem of the infantile and lecherous King Fawz (Peter Ustinov). Meanwhile, the American Air Force enlists an accident prone pilot by the name of John Goldfarb (Richard Crenna) to fly a spy mission over the Soviet Union. Goldfarb has borne the unwanted nickname "Wrong Way Goldfarb" for years – ever since, as a Notre Dame football player, he ran 95 yards to score a touchdown in his OWN end zone – and he is soon up to his old tricks again when he accidentally flies thousands of miles off course and ends up crashing his plane in Fawzia. The befuddled Goldfarb ends up in King Fawz's palace, where he comes across Jenny disguised as a harem girl, pursuing her undercover scoop. Soon though, she has a bigger story on her hands when the King blackmails Goldfarb into coaching a ragtag Arab football team, and arranges for them play a fixed exhibition match against Goldfarb's old crew, the boys from Notre Dame.Based on a novel by William Peter Blatty (later famous for penning The Exorcist), this wild farce is pitched at a level of frantic hysteria from the word go. Every actor is encouraged to shout and scream with reckless abandon – I don't remember another time when the usually likable MacLaine comes across so shrill and irritating, while Ustinov is horribly wasted in what can only be described as a retarded role as the King. Even Crenna - who has made his share of turkeys down the years – might count this as a candidate for his all-time nadir. Blatty's script is an unholy mess, piling absurdity upon absurdity without any sense of comic timing, narrative flow or subtlety. In the face of all this chaos, director J-Lee Thompson throws caution to the wind and allows everyone to do whatever the hell they please. The result is like witnessing a motorway pile-up in horrifying close-up colour. Collectors of terrible movies will have a ball with this one.

I saw "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home" today hoping to see a funny Richard Crenna/Shirley Maclaine film. I was not disappointed. It was the absolute epitome of the '60s, made right in the middle of the decade. The music, done by a young "Johnny" Williams simply managed to reinforce this notion. The opening/ending theme, sung by the lead actress, had an Arabian sound to it, fitting enough. The movie takes place when it was made, in the middle of the Cold War. As it begins, a US ambassador to the nonexistent Middle East country of Fawzia (strangely similar to Saudi Arabia) has just sent the Sultan, a toy train obsessor with a golden golf cart and a harem, pigskin luggage, which just so happens to offend the Muslim. Therefore, the Americans intend to do everything they can to appease him. They didn't count on two things, though: John "Wrong Way" Goldfarb, all-American football star and U2 pilot, and Jenny Ericson, reporter for STRIFE magazine, who intends to get inside the sultan's harem and report on it. Meanwhile, Goldfarb gets lost (big surprise) and crash lands in Fawzia. There are all sorts of crazy complications involving Goldfarb, the reporter (and concubine), and the sultan's would-be football player son, who attended Notre Dame college. It all culminates in an insane football game between Notre Dame and the Fawz U team. If you miss it, you're missing something out of this world. Of course, if you deplore '60s comedies, you might wanna steer clear. Maclaine and Crenna are great together, and Ustinov as the eccentric sultan is brilliant. For all its insanity, I loved it.