Un Américain à Rome

Not even the label of "camp" can save this one. A precursor of The Producers, but without its sparkle or satiric bite. Chevalier does everything short of winking at the camera--a sad final chapter to his career. The project ends up resembling the intentionally bad TV pilot that the film is about.

"Panic Button" is one of the cheapest looking movies I've ever seen. I might be that the copy on YouTube is particularly awful and there are better copies out there...but this one looks dreadful. But what CAN'T be blamed on a cheap print is the absolute worst intro music I've ever heard in a movie. I think cats fighting or fingernails going across a blackboard are possibly BETTER than the 'music' they used! It also features a VERY strange cast...with Maurice Chevalier, Eleanor Parker, Jayne Mansfield and Chuck Connors in the leads and no-name Italians in most of the rest of the roles!

The plot is interesting and is very reminiscent of Mel Brooks' "The Producers"! Mobsters apparently have too much money and they want to hide it by making TV pilots that bomb...and laundering money in the process. But, like the play in "The Producers", the nonsensical pilot they made earns a top award at Cannes! What's next?

Well, for me the film wasn't terrible...just rather poor. While the story idea was cute, they just didn't capitalize on it very well.

Hambone French actor on the skids and a buxom artist's model are tapped to co-star in a rank television production of "Romeo and Juliet" as an automatic $500K tax loss for a shady European business...but of course, the unbelievable product they deliver is embraced by the public. This curious precursor to Mel Brooks' "The Producers", shot in Italy in 1962, was thought unreleasable until Gorton Associates--their only film endeavor!--distributed the picture two years later in the US as a second-biller. While it is interesting to see Maurice Chevalier sharing the screen with Jayne Mansfield, nothing that ensues is quite as clever. NO STARS from ****

I watched this yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. How to write off a vast sum of money in a movie that's doomed to failure and thus evade the revenue investigation.........yes the plot is an earlier incarnation of The Producers' like mischief and invention. It's no where near that great masterpiece in achievement but is still a delightful excursion in to some good old fashioned boulevardier fun. Chevalier as the has-been matinée idol underplays with subtlety where he could have been gruesomely hammy.Oh the joy of seeing him play Romeo to Jayne Mansfield's Juliet!! However he does sing a couple of numbers which are entirely pointless to the plot and immediately forgettable. The true star of the piece however is the GREAT Akim Tamiroff as an acting guru par excellence.As ever he scene steals effortlessly and rewards us with an immensely funny characterisation of vanity and dodgy intellect succumbing to the power of a few dollars wafted under his nose. To see him direct an advancing close up on a potted plant is to witness his genius. See the movie for this moment alone.

One gripe to end on. The company responsible for releasing this video seems to have a contempt for both the movie and its potential viewing audience. The quality of the print is largely awful and no attempt to clean it up. It may not be a classic but it deserves better than this. Still it's the only way to see this movie at the moment so don't hesitate if you are thinking of getting a copy.

If one ignores the pathetic quality of the actual film stock used to bring this to the screen, If one ignores the sad overacting of Mr. Chevalier, If one ignores the convoluted plot, If one ignores the eccentric direction,

One will find some redeeming qualities in Panic Button:

The scenes of Europe, a more innocent Europe, a different mannered Europe were handled well. I really felt transported to the early 60's.

One is able to observe the way that our sensibilities have changed in such few years.

We observe that the sophistication of moviemaking has come a very long way from those days.

I watched this movie with not as much cringing as other reviewers. I tend to discern some of the good things that directors try to bring to movies.

And lastly, I did laugh and I did smile where I should have. So for that, I must at least give Panic Button a "6".