Alle donne ci penso io

I really like this movie, but I like Frank too. Sinatra had some really good movies, and some not so hot, but fun to watch like this one. Anyone who doesn't get this movie is a square. It's fantasy, it's light comedy, it's fun, and it's free. Hard to swallow Dan Blocker as someone other than Hoss, and I love the women in this one. When I was 10 and watched this, I used to think this was real life, and I couldn't wait to be just like Frank. Of course, I'm a little smarter now, but I still wish my young adulthood had had this kind of time, even once. So, the movie substitutes nicely, just like the Elvis movies do. Instead of the "swinging bachelor" life, I am married 30 years with grown kids, and quite happy. I think also having an older brother and younger brothers gives me a neat perspective on this film. Not reality, not meant to be. I also love anything New York, like the waiter who delivers the peas and potatoes because "they come with the meal." Now THAT'S New York customer service at it's best. Just a great evening watching a fun movie. Sinatra in many of his movies, kept his rat pack persona on display. Sinatra was one of a kind. Then again, so was Dean Martin, Sammy, and some of the other "cool cats". Sinatra did quite well. Not bad for a kid from Hoboken.

Round up the usual suspects. This being a Frank Sinatra comedy, there has to be a Cahn-Van Heusen song, arranged by Nelson Riddle. Dean Martin pops up in an under-rehearsed cameo and Jill St. John is Frankie's Bimbo. "It's a business like any other business," says Frank. Was he talking of manufacturing wax fruit, or cranking out cynical sex comedies?

The Baker brothers are out for fun. Alan is a thirty-nine year old playboy who, to his parents' chagrin, remains unmarried (Sinatra was in fact bewigged and fifty-one). His kid brother Buddy (Tony Bill) escapes from the stifling jewish domesticity of Yonkers and joins Alan in his Manhattan bachelor apartment. Drinks, dames and snappy clothes ensue. Because this is 1963, Frank thinks it's the height of cool to shave with an electric razor, use roll-on deodorant and furnish his kitchen in orange plastic. Impressively for 1963, he has a car phone and a remote control device to work his stereo, but were the snapbrim hat and the plaid raincoat REALLY the last word in style in the era of the Rolling Stones?

Essentially a bourgeois jewish comedy of the Neil Simon type, "Come Blow Your Horn" is a bit of froth which does not repay close analysis. There is a cute little phallic joke (the cannon in the movie playing on TV) and Frank's character almost goes somewhere with his 'oldest swinger in town' realisation, but ultimately this is a lazy, shallow little project.

Lee J. Cobb is the long-suffering jewish father, Molly Picon the depressingly stereotypical jewish mom. Hoss from TV's "Bonanza", Dan Blocker, appears briefly as the irate cuckold Eckman. Jill St. John is in simpering Marilyn Monroe mode as Peggy The Babe, not yet showing the intelligent irony on display in "Tony Rome". Tony Bill is good as Buddy, the kid brother corrupted by the philandering Alan, and Barbara Rush impresses as Connie, the good girl.

However, the film's central premise is flawed. The script does not explain (because it can't) how feckless, jobless Alan can afford swish tailoring, ski vacations in Vermont and an apartment the size of Shea Stadium. There is a lame suggestion, right at the end, that some unseen broad can be sweet-talked into donating the bachelor pad to Buddy, but it fails to convince. Rather like the film, really.

"Are you married?" "No." "Then you're a bum!"

That's the famous exchange between Lee J. Cobb and Frank Sinatra in Come Blow Your Horn, a domestic comedy about moving out of the house. I'd always heard great things about this movie, but when I finally saw it, it was a bit of a letdown. I think it got talked up too much. Lee J. Cobb was a stereotypical overbearing father who shouted all of his lines. Molly Picon was extremely irritating as the long suffering mother, and her pacing was way too slow. Tony Bill's character arc wasn't sympathetic: At first he feels oppressed at home so he moves in with his playboy brother whom he idolizes. Then he turns into a playboy himself, with every flaw magnified so the audience can see it was a mistake. Jill St. John was her usual nauseating airhead persona, which left Frank Sinatra on his own to save the movie. Since his character was extremely similar to several others he'd played in the past, there wasn't much he could do with it.

Then again, if you like seeing him in semi-cad playboy roles, you might like this one. The title song is very cute, and some of the jokes are very funny. But I liked A Hole in the Head much better.

This was my first Frank Sinatra movie. I have seen clips of his work, and I have enjoyed his singing for years, but this was the first time I really took a good look at his acting.

Sinatra plays Alan Baker, a crafty ladies' man who is a disappointment to his overbearing father, who is also his boss (and given Alan's work ethic, that's a good thing). His 21-year-old brother Buddy, who also works for his father and has a 'gee-whiz' quality about him, does everything he can to please his parents, but never manages to satisfy them. One day Buddy decides to move in with his brother. This does not please the father one little bit, and the mother is not happy either. Alan wants his brother to be just like him, so he has the brother 'made over' and, when he has too many girlfriends, lets Buddy pose as a Hollywood producer and take out one of the girls, who wants to be an actress. Alan still has two women to juggle, and unfortunately, one of them is married and a big client of his father's company. And her husband is Dan Blocker (who comes across, unfortunately for Alan but not for us, more as Little Joe than Hoss).

Sinatra is good, giving the impression of a much younger man than he would have been when the film was made. He doesn't seem like the Sinatra I knew at first, but later becomes more serious and more like the familiar image. He also gets to sing one song, doing a great job. The actors playing the stereotypically Jewish parents are wonderful (Religion isn't mentioned, but the image of Jewish parents is a familiar one). I haven't seen much of Molly Picon's work, but from seeing this performance and one episode of 'Gomer Pyle, USMC', I can't see anyone portraying the guilt-inducing Jewish mother any better. The actor playing the father made quite an impression as well.

This was a good movie, and though slightly off-color, nowhere near as naughty as movies being made today.

I have to agree with most of what the previous commenter says; this is a largely disappointing movie. Neil Simon's wit here is not yet up to "Odd Couple" or "Sunshine Boys" speed, and some of the acting is lame. Jill St. John is a tad too cutesily dumb, and Tony Bill's Buddy is somewhat grating, especially after his unconvincing conversion from youthful innocent to roue. However, Sinatra is always worth watching and listening to, especially in the masterful Nelson Riddle's arrangements (here an original song, actually). However, the movie is almost worth watching solely for Lee J. Cobb's performance as papa Baker; his sidesplitting performance as the terminally frustrated Mr. Baker is a study in comic skill, particularly in the scenes where he invades the brothers' apartment. I had never see Cobb do comedy before; now my estimation of him as an actor has increased immeasurably. Catch this one just for Cobb.