C'mon, Let's Live a Little

This is a standard '60s teen musical, no worse or flakier than the stuff AIP was putting out between 1963-67. As with those AIP films, the plot is feather light, there are some songs, and the cast is giving it their best shot.

The film is designed as entertainment, an innocuous date film teens could see at the drive in and view intermittently while making out or noshing on concession stand goodies. And this is why the Millennials hate it.

21st century audiences have never seen a film which isn't a pasteboard for political correctness. If a movie doesn't portray white men as idiots, white women as militant warriors who are always right about everything, and blacks as the most noble and brilliant characters in history without whose contributions nothing would exist, then Millennials are against it.

Of course, Millennials are also the least educated generation in American history, and the most brainwashed by leftism. They are also the first generation in history who never knew a sober human being (their grandparents being hippies, their parents being '80s crackheads and themselves being reefer babies).

So perhaps one should consider the source when listening to their criticisms of any film made for less than 250 million dollars and bereft of subversive leftist ideology.

If, however, you remember drive-in culture and enjoy AIP's daft "beach" or "pajama" films from this period, this one will seem no worse.

This corny 1967 film could yet earn itself a serious camp following. I stumbled onto seeing it and thought it must date from the late '50s. Boy was I wrong. It was shocking that someone in Hollywood actually made something like this in 1967. It comes off like they were still trying to save "mainstream" (read white) American youth from the dangers of soul and r&b music and such. Much in this movie seems to fit in well with today's full throttle attempts to throw (not turn) back the clock. Jackie De Shannon, Bobby Vee (whom I don't remember except the name), and also singer Kim Carnes who made this one film appearance. As an American in and from the Upper South I did not find that this film offends the South. It offends everyone in it. Actually one has to brace oneself for its backasswards gender attitudes expressed by some of the guys. Without giving everything away I'm left guessing that (stereotypically) the tail-end of this film (the cinematic equivalent of "the back of the bus") seems to advocate nonverbally the existence of Equal Opportunity Corniness. Some critics have dismissed this poor film as a bomb. They're right. But there's much more to it than that which makes it worth seeing. ... a jaw-dropping, side-splitting, cautionary reality check on today's societal resurrection of the whitebread past.

This was the last thing directed by David Butler, who'd done a lot of TV in recent years but earlier had made a lot of good major-studio features including prime vehicles for Janet Gaynor, Shirley Temple and Doris Day. This film purportedly had budget problems, and it's easy to see that it was probably not a great experience for anyone, least of all Butler, who was over 70 at the time and was clearly not the guy to make a mid-60s teen musical. At best, the movie feels like a mediocre television episode of the time; at worst, it's the "rock" equivalent of such bottom-barrel country music movies at the time as "Las Vegas Hillbillys" and "Hillbillys in a Haunted House."

The print I saw was about 13 minutes shorter than the official original runtime, and I assume several songs got cut, since the first one doesn't turn up until nearly half an hour in, after which point they're almost incessant. The music is perfectly decent-Vee and DeShannon were fine singers, if not much as actors-even though the songs here are hardly memorable. But everything else pretty much blows, from the godawful comedy relief (poor Patsy Kelly and Eddie Hodges) to the utterly stupid plot engine of a terribly clean-cut campus "rebel" calling for "complete freedom," which both the dean and the movie seem to think is a terrible idea. This is a movie too afraid to do more than hint at politics, while suggesting that they are Bad. Real, wholesome youth don't have any ideas or issues on their minds!! Yeesh, even the same year's "The Cool Ones" was less antiquated.

Even as fluff, this movie is airheaded-at least the equally silly beach party movies knew not to meddle with campus protest and such. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink in, there's a "flubber"-type subplot involving a wacky scientific-inventor kid (Hodges). There's also some "hillbilly" relatives who show up for five minutes, then disappear. Needless to say, the only things that have any value here are the music and the occasional go-go dancing, and the underwhelming climax from "The Pair Extraordinarire" really does suggest they ran out of money during production--surely the movie intended to end with a slightly bigger bang. Others have claimed "C'mon" is a potential camp classic (a la "The Cool Ones," which is MUCH more fun), but really, it's too lame for that.

Note to theater-owners: If you ever need a Midnight Movie--other than RHPS, that is--please, consider this little gem. It is MST3K-style comedy GOLD, I tell you! It's has everything a cult movie should need to be popular: wooden acting, goofy dialogue, what-the-hell-is-THIS-doing-here musical numbers, racism, misogyny, and much, much, more. The girls are as cute as they are dumb, and the men are...well...let's just say they make Ryan Seacrest look ultra macho. The basic plot is that a young, vaguely Canadian hillbilly (Bobby "In-it-for-the-money" Vee) saves the, ahem, "girl" (Jackie "Just-payin'-the-mortgage" DeShannon) from a faded projection background...I mean, car accident. When they get to the University, it's revealed that (A) she's the dean's daughter, and (B) there's about to be a "Revoluton". (Excuse me while I try to overcome the Giggles.) Throughout this film Bobby and Jackie demonstrate two different schools of acting: She coming from the Marlo Thomas School; He, Pia Zadora. In short, you'll laugh (for all the wrong reasons), you'll cry (from chuckling so hard), you'll get constipated (from all of the cheese fed from this movie)!

I was a high school senior in 1967 and this movie is a fantasy of that era if there ever was one. Bobby Vee was a pretty good singer back in the day, and I like listening to his music, but he could forget about being an actor. He was as terrible in this as the movie itself. This movie made the 'Frankie & Annette' movies look like best movie Oscar winners!