C'mon, Let's Live a Little

This is a standard '60s teen musical, no worse or flakier than the stuff AIP was putting out between 1963-67. As with those AIP films, the plot is feather light, there are some songs, and the cast is giving it their best shot.

The film is designed as entertainment, an innocuous date film teens could see at the drive in and view intermittently while making out or noshing on concession stand goodies. And this is why the Millennials hate it.

21st century audiences have never seen a film which isn't a pasteboard for political correctness. If a movie doesn't portray white men as idiots, white women as militant warriors who are always right about everything, and blacks as the most noble and brilliant characters in history without whose contributions nothing would exist, then Millennials are against it.

Of course, Millennials are also the least educated generation in American history, and the most brainwashed by leftism. They are also the first generation in history who never knew a sober human being (their grandparents being hippies, their parents being '80s crackheads and themselves being reefer babies).

So perhaps one should consider the source when listening to their criticisms of any film made for less than 250 million dollars and bereft of subversive leftist ideology.

If, however, you remember drive-in culture and enjoy AIP's daft "beach" or "pajama" films from this period, this one will seem no worse.

I was a high school senior in 1967 and this movie is a fantasy of that era if there ever was one. Bobby Vee was a pretty good singer back in the day, and I like listening to his music, but he could forget about being an actor. He was as terrible in this as the movie itself. This movie made the 'Frankie & Annette' movies look like best movie Oscar winners!

This was the last thing directed by David Butler, who'd done a lot of TV in recent years but earlier had made a lot of good major-studio features including prime vehicles for Janet Gaynor, Shirley Temple and Doris Day. This film purportedly had budget problems, and it's easy to see that it was probably not a great experience for anyone, least of all Butler, who was over 70 at the time and was clearly not the guy to make a mid-60s teen musical. At best, the movie feels like a mediocre television episode of the time; at worst, it's the "rock" equivalent of such bottom-barrel country music movies at the time as "Las Vegas Hillbillys" and "Hillbillys in a Haunted House."

The print I saw was about 13 minutes shorter than the official original runtime, and I assume several songs got cut, since the first one doesn't turn up until nearly half an hour in, after which point they're almost incessant. The music is perfectly decent-Vee and DeShannon were fine singers, if not much as actors-even though the songs here are hardly memorable. But everything else pretty much blows, from the godawful comedy relief (poor Patsy Kelly and Eddie Hodges) to the utterly stupid plot engine of a terribly clean-cut campus "rebel" calling for "complete freedom," which both the dean and the movie seem to think is a terrible idea. This is a movie too afraid to do more than hint at politics, while suggesting that they are Bad. Real, wholesome youth don't have any ideas or issues on their minds!! Yeesh, even the same year's "The Cool Ones" was less antiquated.

Even as fluff, this movie is airheaded-at least the equally silly beach party movies knew not to meddle with campus protest and such. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink in, there's a "flubber"-type subplot involving a wacky scientific-inventor kid (Hodges). There's also some "hillbilly" relatives who show up for five minutes, then disappear. Needless to say, the only things that have any value here are the music and the occasional go-go dancing, and the underwhelming climax from "The Pair Extraordinarire" really does suggest they ran out of money during production--surely the movie intended to end with a slightly bigger bang. Others have claimed "C'mon" is a potential camp classic (a la "The Cool Ones," which is MUCH more fun), but really, it's too lame for that.

'Art pour l'art' may be a french way of saying that all art is worthy by its very existence, but this film may give future viewers a distorted view of life in the 1960's. I think that the movie is so bad that it is interesting to watch. Bobby Vee's straw hat is a fashion statement in itself---one that didn't catch on, I might add. The year 1967 was a difficult one for the United States with war, urban riots, and voting rights struggles, yet this film must represent what Richard Nixon would later refer to as the "great silent majority" in America: really nice kids arguing about what kind of events should be allowed on a small college campus. Should students be allowed to speak out on the issues of the day? Not if it involves topics that the administration of the campus finds provocative. If the "Miranda rights" an accused presently enjoys were overturned and coercive measures could be used by law enforcement, it wouldn't be necessary to use physical means to gain a "confession" from a suspect. Merely tie the accused to a chair and play this film on a loop for a few hours. Case closed!

10 out of 10 if you need a great laugh! It should be noted that the writer, June Starr and the producer, Alex Alexander (among other aka's) were husband and wife. Unfortunately neither one recognized how bad this film really was. Much to my surprise it was on TCM about 2 years ago and I was spellbound by it. It's just not a classic for the right reasons. I agree with those who believe it would make a great midnight movie. There is real talent on screen with Bobby Vee, Jackie DeShannon, and Kim Carnes. Eddie Hodges had a TV acting career, but best of all is Ken Osmond who we all know as Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver. There's just not enough talent to overcome the archaic script and a fairly low budget. Direction seemed to be at a minimum . . . and it shows. It looks and feels like a movie out of the 50's which would never do well in the late 60's. Enjoy it for the comedy it is.