Some Kind of a Nut

This is really an awful film. In 1968, Garson Kanin was very highly regarded - most famously, he wrote "Born Yesterday" - but this was the first film he had directed since "Tom, Dick and Harry" in 1941 (this film was started before Kanin's second film of the year "Where It's At" in the spring of 1968, but was halted in mid-production, and was finished after the latter film) and the results were a disaster. The script sucks and Van Dyke is thoroughly obnoxious and unlikeable in the lead. About the only positive thing I can say about the film is the presence of the two beautiful blonde female leads - the sexy Angie Dickinson and the classy, elegant Rosemary Forsyth.

An obscure comedy that bombed in movie theaters in 1969, SOME KIND OF A NUT follows the plight of Fred Amidon (Dick Van Dyke), a Manhattan bank teller caught up in a divorce from Rachel (Angie Dickinson) while planning a future with a new fiancée, Pamela (Rosemary Forsyth). The movie opens with Fred and Pamela picnicking in Central Park and encountering a bee that stings Fred on the chin. Fred grows a beard to cover the bee sting, which his boss objects to and demands that he shave it off. Fred refuses, taking a stand after a lifetime of conforming to other people's demands. After he is fired, co-workers go on strike and Fred is soon joined by hippies and jazz musicians with beards. Garson Kanin's very lightweight "anti-Establishment " comedy begins well but quickly wanes with its one-joke plot, descending into mediocre slapstick despite a few zany comedic moments. SOME KIND OF A NUT suffers from a badly miscast Dick Van Dyke, who often defaults to his broad brand of physical comedy when a more low-key approach was clearly needed. Angie Dickinson is totally wasted here, while Rosemary Forsyth does what she can with an unsympathetic character. Much of the intended hilarity falls flat, as in scenes when Pamela's brothers attempt to shave off Fred's beard. Only Zohra Lambert hits a proper note of goofiness as an overage "hippie" enamored of Fred's cause for independence from traditional values.

It is obvious that Van Dyke was begging his agent to get him something different to prove that he could play a lead character that was unlikable. He must've admired his friend Andy Griffith's bravura performance in "A Face In The Crowd" very much. Friend Carl Reiner directed him in the overlooked gem, "The Comic" in 1968. Van Dyke and the script were perfect, but the movie bombed, thus threatening to pigeonhole him more than ever in Disney-ish tripe. Mind you, I'm just extrapolating from the facts I know, but it sure seems that Van Dyke was a desperate man when he agreed to star in this uneven amalgamation of nihilist farce, cultural satire, and moralistic claptrap. And Van Dyke seemed determined to force the darkest side of his unreasonably unlikable and self-destructive character down the audience's throat. I found it very hard to take in the theaters as an adolescent, but recently watched it on tape to see if I felt the same way as an adult. Not quite. As an adult, I found it a fascinating time capsule but otherwise, an all-too-annoying and impossible attempt to capture the essence of theater d'absurd with American TV actors, then compounding its own futility by eventually copping out on its only reason to exist.

Avoid this mess unless you are doing a film studies paper.

Zany far out satire about a man who is fired from his job when he grows a beard to cover up a bee sting. Thus begins a long line of wacky characters, wild camera angles and situations. Has a few funny moments to keep this from being the complete bomb all the other critics say it is. Best part comes when in a show of solidarity all the co-workers begin to wear fake beards, even the women! Angie Dickinson helps the scenary and Johnny Mandel gives a very bouncy score.

The opening 10mns of "Some Kind of a Nut" feature New York City bank teller Dick Van Dyke and a female co-worker trying to avoid getting stung by a bee in Central Park on their lunch hour (they end up tearing each other's clothes off, and getting ticketed for disorderly conduct). Writer-director Garson Kanin is straining so hard to be with-it, he turns even a comic genius like Dick Van Dyke into a person we'd rather be without. After Van Dyke grows a beard to cover the bee sting on his chin, he's ordered by his conservative employer to shave it off; after he refuses, he's fired and branded a rebel for "bucking the system". A prime example of old-fogey Hollywood (i.e., the entertainment Establishment) trying to "keep up with the kids" in 1970. Unfortunately, "Some Kind of a Nut" isn't nutty enough. As a history lesson for cinephiles, it's interesting--but as a comedy, it's an embarrassment. NO STARS from ****