Torero malgré lui

As a lifelong Peter Sellers fan, I've seen this movie a few times even though I know the letdown is coming at the end. I'm always lured back by Sellers' performance here, proving once again he was one of the greatest actors in all the world. He plays Juan Bautista, a traveling singing matador who attempts to seduce the local flirt/bitch of Barcelona in exchange for a gig at the local theater. It is one of his most charming, touching, beautifully subtle performances ever, as the film takes you along their unusual courtship until he finally melts her heart and wins her over. At the point, the story takes an unexpected turn that is so shocking and so patently unfunny and so vile, I can't imagine what anyone connected with the film was possibly thinking when they made it. I am no sucker for happy Hollywood endings, but the end to this movie is so out-of-step with what we've just seen in the last ninety minutes that it just spoiled the whole thing for me. I still rate it as the worst movie ending of all time. As far the rest of it, Sellers and then-wife Britt Ekland (who never looked better) have some lovely scenes; their first date at a nightclub that features flamenco dancing really stands out. With a different finale, this could have been a rare gem in the Peter Sellers catalogue. As it is, it's just OK. 2 1/2 ** out of 4

THE BOBO will undoubtedly disappoint those expecting Peter Sellers to be doing Clouseau-style slapstick, and those that expect the satirical humor he was also famous for.

Instead, this is a character comedy and Juan Bautista (not Batista)is one of Sellers' more interesting characters, albeit from among his lesser efforts. But even lesser Sellers is better than the overall product from today's so-called comedy geniuses.

BOBO was well-made, with a great opening sequence aerial shot of Barcelona, Spain (although I believe the picture was made in Italy). The plot involves Sellers as Bautista, an ex-matador who wants to break into show business in Barcelona, but can't seem to get a theater booking. He finally is promised one if - and only if - he can conquer a rather cold-hearted gold digger named Olimpia Segura (played by Britt Ekland, Mrs. Sellers at the time).

There are some good comedy bits and sequences throughout the film. Bautista's attempts to audition for the theater owner are amusing (and unless I'm mistaken, Sellers does his own singing). He does some matador maneuvers while pretending a sportscar is a bull. The scenes at the hideaway-retreat are very good. Later, he gets dunked in a tub of blue dye and becomes "The Blue Singing Matador".

Sellers (Bautista) and Ekland (Olimpia) work well together in the only time they were paired romantically on screen. Added to which, the picture does not end the way that most people think it will. On my own Sellers scale of five stars, THE BOBO ranks three stars.

I think this is one of Peter Sellers' best movies, along with "Dr. Strangelove...", "Only Two Can Play," "Two-Way Stretch," "A Shot in the Dark," "After the Fox," and of course the original Pink Panther...

Sellers is charmingly funny and Britt Eklund is deliciously stunning, and perfect for her role as a femme fatale who toys with men only to succumb to Sellers' rather pathetic efforts at courtship.

There are a number of creative and funny scenes but the "Hermitage" restaurant scene during Sellers' and Eklund's first "date" is especially maginative and hilarious...not to be missed.

Not a shoot-'em-up, but a rather lovely film with a great cast and great production values.

In order to get a booking in Spain as a "singing matador", Peter Sellers must first spend an hour alone with ravishing Britt Ekland, the local tease who has developed a bad reputation-in-reverse due to the fact she spurns all the men who desire her. Screenwriter David R. Schwartz adapted his own play, which began as the novel "Olimpia" by Burt Cole, but he seems to have left out the heart of the story. Sellers and Ekland (real-life marrieds at the time) are both good, though neither has much of a character to play. The low-keyed film is so restrained, it may confound viewers hoping for a European farce. There are minor compensations: some of Peter's shtick, including a pantomime bit on the street, is funny, also the affected way Sellers pronounces "Barcelona". The sight-gag in the final act is successfully rendered, and Francis Lai contributes a beautiful bossa nova score. Still, the picture never really takes off, remains a rather glum and meandering vehicle for its star. ** from ****

"The Bobo" is not a very good movie. It's arguably not even fair, though it has a history behind it. Popular opinion has it that Peter Sellers, the greatest screen comedian of his day, began a lengthy descent from the clouds of his late '50s/early '60s apogee with this silly sex farce co-starring his then-wife, Britt Ekland.

Sure, "The Bobo" isn't brilliant, and clearly suffers from Sellers' Charlie Chaplin complex in that he portrays himself as something of a dupe (a "bobo," as is said in the movie) in upholding the honor of a supremely designing woman. But watching the film today is not unpleasant. It's no great laugh fest, but it is amusing in parts, and Sellers and Ekland have real chemistry. Sellers, just weeks away from death in 1980 and reacting to Ekland's harsh depiction of him in her tell-all auto, "True Brit," called the mother of his youngest child "a professional girlfriend and an amateur actress" and though uncharitable, that dig isn't without merit. It's just that there's more on offer in this one time we got to see the husband and wife paired up romantically on screen.

Sellers plays a singing matador named Juan Bautista, looking for his big break on the streets of picaresque Barcelona. Impresario Carbonell (Adolfo Celi), nursing a deep grudge against the tantalizing, unavailable Olimpia Segura (Ekland) who lives across the street from his favorite watering hole, offers Bautista a brief engagement - if the singer can bed her.

"The Bobo" starts with real promise, taking advantage of its Catalonian setting with an aerial shot of a Christ statue above the city of Barcelona with soaring musical accompaniment that promises much. The film itself starts slowly, with the setting of the bet between Carbonell and Bautista and a demonstration of Olimpia's gold-digging cruelty. Not many actual laughs, which is alright since it's not worth setting expectations you are in for a particularly funny movie when you aren't, but it's a start.

The middle section of "The Bobo" is good, though, at times brilliant. I'm thinking mainly of the flamenco dance in which Bautista, early on in his attempt to scam the lovely Olimpia, surrenders center-stage to one of the most amazing dances ever seen on screen. The dancer looks like Angus Young of AC/DC, but she is all woman, an arresting image of the throes of passion which totally grabs you and holds you by the throat as the camera lingers on her waist, her wrists, and the strands of caramel hair glued to her Angelina Jolie lips while her heels beat like the Four Horses of the Apocalypse. There's also a real funny exit line from Bautista, easily the best laugh in the film.

I'd just be tempted to say hack director Robert Parrish just got lucky there, but he shows more greatness in a sequence at a ritzy retreat where Bautista, improvising like a madman, makes up excuses for a non-existent count who is standing up an annoyed Olimpia. Great '60s ambiance abounds, especially when a fey majordomo played enjoyably by John Wells prances in to explain how everything works.

The film peters out after that, especially near the end when it comes time for Bautista and Carbonell to settle up. Celi was such a great presence in "Thunderball" you sort of know he was capable of more than the script allowed him here.

Other parts of the film are similarly weak. There's a pathetic journalist character played by Kenneth Griffith who is too unctuous and gross to be enjoyed, and Sellers presses the pathos button too much. Ekland's character is so nasty as to make her unlikable most of the time we are watching her, which takes away from the pleasure of her sexy presence more than it should. (Ekland does a good job in her thankless role, though, better than we have any right to expect.) But Barcelona in the later Franco era makes for a very exotic and enjoyable atmosphere, especially when accompanied by a gorgeous score.

Would that Sellers had been a reasonable man, realizing he wasn't best suited as a romantic hero but as a bumbler stealing the audience's heart. "The Bobo" has moments where he plays for laughs, and moments when he just vogues in a matador costume, and it's no trick seeing the difference and which is better. But I enjoy watching "The Bobo," and I suspect that, divorced from any great expectations, you will, too.