Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Boeing, Boeing Blu-ray Movie Review

This film is a farce.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 23, 2012

If the French didn’t invent the sex farce, they certainly raised it to the level of something approaching Art (with a capital A). And we Americans have repeatedly taken these supercharged soufflés and punched and prodded them until they’re flat as a pancake. The sixties would seem to have been the near perfect decade for the reemergence of the sex farce, what with its Free Love ethos and all. But even a cursory review of some of the attempts (in the film world, anyway) that came along in that tumultuous era would give credence to the idea that somehow, somewhere, something was definitely lost in translation. One of the all time classic farces, Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear, received a rather opulent film adaptation in 1968 starring Rex Harrison, a film which nonetheless seemed to pretty much miss the ebullient spirit of Feydeau’s original with a bloated and overwrought screenplay and performance style. A more modern take on the classic sex farce had similar problems three years earlier with 1965’s Boeing Boeing, a kind of smarmy look at the escapades of a gallivanting bachelor named Bernard (Tony Curtis) who keeps a revolving door of stewardesses traipsing in and out of his Paris apartment, all of them believing she’s his one and only and in fact his fiancée. Bernard’s incredibly convoluted love life, which is managed down to the minute with timetables and sliderules (to compute flying time), becomes significantly more complex when two of his paramours are transferred to faster jets, meaning they’ll both be in Paris more often. Then things get really complicated when Bernard’s nemesis Robert (Jerry Lewis) shows up, wanting to crash in Bernard’s place for a few nights. This overly frantic, spectacularly unfunny enterprise was based on a successful French play by Marc Camoletti which had matriculated to the Great White Way in early 1965 (partially under the auspices of Hal Wallis, who produced this film version). It bombed on Broadway, barely eking out a one month run, which should have been Wallis’ first clue that something germane to the play’s Continental success hadn’t quite made it over the pond with the script. (For you trivia lovers, the Broadway version didn’t really have any bona fide marquee names attached to it, but fifties film fans will recognize the name of the man hired to understudy the roles of Bernard and Robert: Carleton Carpenter. There was also a revival of the play done a couple of years ago with Bradley Whitford and Christine Baranski that managed to carve out a run of a few months.) The film version of Boeing Boeing only further exacerbates what would have been a rocky road in any case with its fatal miscasting of a frantic Tony Curtis in the lead and an incredibly subdued Jerry Lewis in what basically amounts to a supporting role.

The legendary screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) wrote a fantastic book called The Season about the 1967-68 year on Broadway, which up to that point was the least successful time frame in Broadway history, at least with regard to the Broadway musical. One of Goldman’s chapters was about one of the few musicals that opened that year that managed to last for more than a month or two, the wittily named How Now, Dow Jones. (Again for your trivia lovers, How Now, Dow Jones marked one of the rare Broadway scores by iconic film composer Elmer Bernstein.) Goldman’s thesis was that the only reason a musical as dunderheaded as How Now, Dow Jones managed to run at all was due to the allure of that very witty title. The show made little sense (it was about a Dow Jones reporter whose boyfriend promises to marry her only after the Dow breaks 1,000—my, how times have changed—so she simply announces it has broken 1,000), it didn’t have a fantastic score (though “Step to the Rear” has become a minor standard), and it certainly didn’t have any big names (though co-stars Tony Roberts and Brenda Vaccaro later became better known for other projects). That same thesis might be applied to at least the French success of Boeing Boeing, which artfully plays on both the aviation angle as well as the bouncing in and out of the various stewardesses (not to mention the “bouncing” of the stewardesses themselves). But this title turns out to be only skin deep, as it were, for there is certainly nothing very bouncy about the film itself.

Some indication of how slightly creepy this film is comes right off the bat in its title sequence. Subtitling each Boeing is (707) (supposedly lest the joke not be gotten), and then when the three actresses playing the stewardesses are shown, believe it or not, subtitling their names are their measurements! To repeat the comment above about the Dow breaking 1,000: my, how times have changed! The problem with Boeing Boeing is that it doesn’t even leer successfully. While there’s some passing humor with the ultra uptight German stewardess, who tends to bark out orders like an Aryan youth, the British stewardess is actually pretty brainy and reserved, and the French stewardess is pretty much an afterthought. If these women had been more than merely window dressing, it might have added some grist for the comedic mill. As the film stands, they’re all ciphers more or less, which leaves the supposed “comedy” mostly up to Curtis and Thelma Ritter, as his put upon housekeeper.

Boeing Boeing was a not especially auspicious end to Jerry Lewis’ long and vaunted relationship with Paramount. Though he was obviously trying something “new” with this role, one has to wonder if the film might have been better served with him playing Bernard and Curtis playing Robert. Curtis is just too busy (for want of a better term) in this role, fussing and futzing and sputtering out lines like he’s high on Benzedrine. Seeing his manic performance thrust up against the weirdly lugubrious Lewis is an exercise in tedium, despite all of the noise. Even Ritter can’t evoke much laughter here, even with her patented sourpuss face and deadpan sarcastic line deliveries. Boeing Boeing is simply a film that never takes flight.

Boeing, Boeing Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Boeing Boeing is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This has reportedly been sourced from an interpositive in generally very good to excellent condition, and it similarly (as with Olive's standard operating procedure) shows no signs of having been digitally tweaked. Colors are bold and bright and pop quite well, and for the most part, the image is nicely sharp if not incredibly well detailed. The strangest thing about this transfer is how suddenly it will get incredibly soft, if only for a moment. This must be due to the source elements, but why it's so is a headscratcher. Things will be proceeding apace quite nicely and then suddenly a quick cut to the British stewardess in a phone booth (to give just one example) looks like it came from a completely different source. The process photography suffers the most, as is to be expected, with an added layer of grain and dirt in some of the film's opticals. Otherwise, though, this is at the very least an above average looking transfer that doesn't present too many issues even if it never really bursts into an incredible high definition look.

Boeing, Boeing Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Boeing Boeing features a rather good sounding lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono mix that offers clear and crisp sounding dialogue with few if any problems. The film also features a typically bouncy score by Neal Hefti, and even if this isn't exactly Hefti's most memorable work, his kind of wacky theme (with a chorus singing nonsense syllables that occasionally morph into "ooh-la-la") is enjoyable and adds a certain luster to the film it's otherwise lacking. Fidelity here is just fine, if not especially impressive, and the track suffers from no major issues or damage of any kind.

Boeing, Boeing Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray.

Boeing, Boeing Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Frenetic without being very funny, Boeing Boeing is one of the strangest films in both the Tony Curtis and (especially) the Jerry Lewis oeuvres. Director John Rich tries to open up this obvious one set stagebound play, but what this really needed was a smarter rewrite than it received. People come and go, doors get slammed, but there's nary a farcical punchline to be had, aside from a few zingers lobbed by Thelma Ritter. Lewis had been a Paramount sure bet for well over fifteen years when Boeing Boeing was released, but this film signified a dry spell for the multi-talented producer-director-writer-star. Shoved into a supporting role that he was ill equipped to handle, that left most of the comedic heavy lifting to Curtis, who seems similarly uncomfortable with his character. This is one layover (pun definitely intended) you should skip.