The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

Dobie Gillis shows up on campus having already decided to dedicate his college years to having fun and pursuing women. Pansy Hammer, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to "study, study, study" and "work, work work". Naturally it's love at first sight. It doesn't take long for the two to work out their differences, but it will take the rest of the movie for her father to be convinced!

Having never realized that Dobie Gillis had been made into a movie prior to the television series, I naturally had to watch this movie if only for historical purposes. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find myself thoroughly entertained by a very good comedy quite capable of standing on its own merits. It's silly but it works, and is filled in quite nicely with several excellent song and dance routines. All of the cast is outstanding, from stars to supporting roles, but it is Bobby Van who steals the show as the happy-go-lucky Dobie Gillis.

My reviews often seem to be "in defense of" reviews after a group of reviews pan a movie, without really considering the genre. It is like reviewing a opera as bad when the standard being applied it a hip hop concert. Or something like that.

This movie is silly and lightweight. Folks break out singing and dancing all over the place, cuz it is an MGM musical. (I do ding it for being in black and white.)

The leads are Bobby Van and Debby Reynolds. They sing, they dance, they act as silly as can be. It is fun, it is very 50's. All is resolved in the end. It is cute. And you get to see Bob Fosse in his early days blowing everyone off of the screen with his dancing.

Great character actors abound, playing up their characters to the top, in a way that current film makers would never allow. I'm not saying I want to see lots of this kind of fluff, but as fluff it is pretty good. And the fantasy part makes me want to go back to the midwest and do college again. Well perhaps that is overstated.

Watch this to see the fun dance numbers and take a look at the Hollywood take on college in the 50's. It is a bit of an anthropological statement dressed up with some fun music. Sex,,,,Nope ya won't see that; but you do see the obsessional way that 18 year olds fall in love. And a movie that can capture that (as I remember it rather than with the rather bad parts of it) has its good moments.

Everyone is cute, everyone is white, everyone is straight (even though they sing and dance and write poetry an awful lot). If that is not you, ya got to take a bigger step or suspension of belief to become involved in the movie. The heavies are not that heavy, bad behavior is overlooked as youthful indiscretions. Looking at this view of idealized life and how it has changed in 50 years is interesting in itself. This is also one of the last of MGM's musicals. Bobby Van really did not adapt to the changing times, or at least studios did not see his potential for non-singing and dancing roles. That is a shame. Debby Reynolds is still working after the death of the musical, and Bob Fosse went stellar in spite of the death of the musical. They just kept making them for him (still do and he has been dead for about 15 years!). A good later nighter.

A very attractive cast and a couple of good musical numbers make for reasonably good entertainment. Far different from the TV series that came a few years later (and not as good in my opinion), this feature was actually inspired by the Max Shulman Dobie Gillis stories from the forties. Shulman, who also wrote the the screenplay for this movie, does manage to work in bits and pieces of his short stories into the script, but not too successfully. The reason for this is that the original stories were stand-alone brilliant comic masterpieces. Here we just see a little scene from this one, and one from that one, and so on. The way to really, really enjoy Dobie Gillis is to track down the out-of-print collection, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis"(easily available at Amazon). I'm a fan of the TV series, and I like this movie, but neither can hold a candle to the hilarious short stories that served as the original inspiration for both the TV and screen versions.

By the way, it was only about two years ago that I read the original stories. They are every bit as wonderful today as when they were originally written.

I caught this film in the pre-dawn hours of an insomniac night recently, and found it reasonably diverting, although certainly no cinematic treasure. It does, however, contain genuine buried treasure for anyone interested in dance history, especially fans of Bob Fosse. The future Triple Crown of entertainment winner (Tony, Emmy, and Oscar in the same year) has a dance solo in this little movie which is positively searing, absolutely mind-bending in its virtuosity...and that's as seen in 2006. In its original release that sequence must have snapped the jaws of any member of the audience who'd ever taken a dance class. The man was simply fantastic, making Bobby Van, a decent hoofer himself, look like a club-footed spaz. I'd watch the storyless antics of Van's Gillis again just to see that number. By the way, I have read the original Dobie Gillis novel by Max Shulman, and it is very funny, as well as substantially earthier than any film or TV version of the story. If you see it in the library, give it a try.

Being based on short stories that are still of much great enjoyment now and having people as talented as Debbie Reynolds, Bob Fosse, Hans Conreid and Bobby Van, 'The Affairs of Dobie Gillis' had all the makings of being good-natured fun and being very difficult to dislike.

'The Affairs of Dobie Gillis' is not necessarily a great film by all means, with a very thin, often meandering and at times non-existent story that feels like several comic situations/stories cobbled together and not much else. While most of the film is very entertaining and achieves what it set out to do very well indeed, there is always going to be the criticisms that some of the situations are unbelievably silly and that it's dated, so suspension of disbelief is needed.

Fosse doesn't look so comfortable in his role in the acting department and his personality doesn't shine as much as when he is dancing.

However, 'The Affairs of Dobie Gillis' is very nicely designed and quaintly photographed. The music fits very well and is more than listenable on its own as well, the standout song being the heart-melting "All I Do is Dream of You". When it comes to the choreography and dancing, Fosse in particular scintillates in a routine that brims with energy, clever choreographic flourishes and extraordinary dance technique.

Regarding the script, it is here very light and bubbly, never trying to do more or be more complicated than needed. A good deal of it is silly too, but has such a good nature and has its heart in the right place that it is hard to be too hard on it. The film moves quickly and never feels dull, because the energy of the cast and the pleasant atmosphere moves things along so well.

Despite having mixed feelings on Fosse (loved the dancing, didn't look at ease in the acting), the rest of the acting fares well. Van is at his most likeably earnest, while Reynolds is spunky and charming and Barbara Ruick is suitably peppy. In support, an amusing Hans Conreid, firm Charles Lane and tyrannical Hanley Stafford stand out in particular. The direction is more than competent throughout, having the right lightness of touch.

On the whole, not a great film but an enjoyably good-natured and easily watchable one. 7/10 Bethany Cox