Le fauve est déchaîné

One of my most fondest memories growing up. My dad and I would watch it every time it came on the television and it is one of my favorites and always has been. It is clean, funny, and just a great cast and the lion is priceless. It would be wonderful if it would be released on DVD. I have been looking for this movie on the internet for years now and have come to realize I am not going to find it. If anyone has not seen it well, it is a must see movie. It is fun and heart filled and something you can watch with the whole family. They just don't make movies like they used to. I am hoping one day to have the experience of watching it with my daughter as well. Never has a movie held so much meaning to me and even more so since I lost my day and I would love to be able to watch it once again with my mom and daughter. It is a great movie, must see, two thumbs way up.

I love Tony Randall movies and so after I finished watching another one of his delightful films (THE BRASS BOTTLE), I decided to give FLUFFY a try. After all, I liked him in so many films and this one looked pretty cute...so I was bound to like it, right. No...no...no! In fact, I disliked it so much I couldn't even finish it.

The story is about a very eccentric man, Professor Potter (Randall)...too eccentric to be believable in any way. The story begins with security guards at the university breaking into Potter's lab and trying to confiscate his lion, named 'Fluffy'. They don't realize that Fluffy is very tame and sweet and they don't give Potter any time to explain. So, Potter is forced to use their dart guns on them and make his escape with Fluffy. He then checks in with his pet to a rooming house--all the while they don't realize the pet is a lion. And again and again, folks ALMOST see Fluffy when it escapes and walks about doing nothing in particular. And, Potter seems a bit oblivious to the fact that a lion running about town might cause a few problems.

The problem with the film is that they didn't make Potter so much eccentric as a complete idiot. Again and again, he could explain things simply but doesn't and every problem that arises seems completely contrived. Rises, at its best, to the level of a sub-par 1960s Disney film but never better. Tons of broad humor, overreactions and stupid special effects (such as phone in champagne basket and short- circuiting switchboard). Just dumb.

1965 studios clearly didn't have a clue, evidenced by this Universal release. Do we call the key stone cops farcical? This might be charming for nostalgia seekers but not me. On release I was in Jr high and knew this was witless and just stupily loud. 50 years later...I like animals, there is some charm...but all these characters are too stupid. Keep the FF nearby.

This movie was always a guilty pleasure for me. Whenever I saw it would be on, I finagled a way to be able to watch. Being a cat-lover, I loved the lion. Even now, I find myself smiling, just thinking about the film.

The cast was perfect in their over-reactions and bluster when confronted by the lion and Tony Randall's insistence that Fluffy would hurt no one. It's classic comedy for its time, and the humor still works, all these years later.

I highly recommend this film for harmless fun that's enjoyable for adults and children.

Tony Randall plays a professor of comparative psychology who is chased out of his animal lab by the cops, who are responding to complaints by the neighbors that he's harboring a wild beast. It's only Fluffy, a tame and very sleepy lion, who checks in with Randall at an apartment-hotel under the nose of manager Edward Andrews (Randall orders 35 hamburgers and a vat of Pablum from room service, sending the Asian staff into a tizzy). A brunette Shirley Jones plays the begrudging love-interest, who initially believes police reports that Randall is psychotic (he's so incredibly guileless about how other people feel about an uncaged lion walking around that the cops may have a point). Gitchy-goo comedy for family audiences; utterly underwhelming and unrewarding. Jim Backus is wasted as a desk sergeant; Adam Roarke (later of the juvenile delinquent wheelers of the late-'60s) has a clean-cut role here as a newlywed. *1/2 from ****