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Perfect posture and great bodies dominate in this oddball Tony Curtis comedy. Just about everyone in these reels of celluloid has a superb physique: Claudia Cardinale, Sharon Tate, and even the muscle men pumping iron on the beach. Hard to believe fact: this movie was based on a novel! Some of the bloated beach bums must have stumbled in from a "method" acting class. The leader savors every line of dialog as if it was Milton or Shakespeare. Weird. The setting is radiant to the eye. The special effects people deserve a gold metal for delivering some of the most realistic shots, up to that time, of the ground cracking open and an upscale villa sliding and tumbling down a steep embankment and into the surf. Impressive. It's sad to see Sharon Tate--so young and pretty--just three years before the Manson Gang got their hands on her. Miss Tate's character is skilled in many physical pursuits: trampoline and skydiving included. In one improbable scene, she saves Tony Curtis, James Bond-like, by strapping herself to the free-falling con-man. Miss Cardinale has the curves to match her rival, but she is straddled with shrill dialog and a cranky demeanor. Jim Backus plays himself and performs his "Mister Magoo" routine. I think the movie works so well because it perfectly captures the Southern California scene at a time when many things were changing--and not always for the best. The mid-sixties was the last gasp of a more innocent time and cinema. View after midnight--it rocks.

This movie seems to have a lot going for it. The stunning photography of gorgeous Los Angeles; a charming theme song by The Byrds; two of the most beautiful women you could imagine , Sharon Tate and Claudia Cardinale; plus some funny folk in supporting roles. Strangely it misses. It just goes on and on with no laffs, and no particular purpose. Sharon , As in The wrecking Crew, proves she had great potential in comedy, and is so gorgeous you want to see more of her. So I would recommend this movie only for Sharon Tate fans. If you arent a fan, you will be disapointed as there is really nothing else here worthwhile. I waited to see the movie for a long time, and felt ripped off.

This is one of my favorite movies about Los Angeles. It has everything.

Gorgeous locations on the beach, stunningly beautiful actors, a brilliant and witty script full of hilarious, exageratted incidents which are nevertheless typical of LA.

It is not only funny but engaging, the plot is interesting. It was even better the second time I saw it on the big screen, where it is best seen.

I was totally captivated by this film.

I find this film much wittier and funnier, for example, than "Some Like It Hot", also with Curtis, and I find Sharon Tate much sexier than Monroe in that film.

The plot is a bit crazy but compeletely believable and consistent with itself and reality; as a comedy it falls in the exagerrated or surrealistic category, only slightly dark because of the various difficulties that beset the hero.

Above all it is a brilliant comment on Los Angeles of the sixties and is still valid in the 2000's. An overlooked gem, a great cast, which may work best for those who have lived in LA.

Another film like this, with good LA locations, less comedy more suspense, is "Into the Night".

"Don't Make Waves" -- is it an attempt at an mature beach movie? A spoof of beach movies? A midlife crisis movie? A Tony Curtis-as-middle-aged-hustler movie?

Tony Curtis plays a not-so-young man whose life is ruined and all his earthly belongings destroyed by an accident prone mistress (Cardinale) of an obnoxious pool magnate (Webber). Curtis worms his way into the pool company -- apparently not to wreak revenge (or is it) but just to get ahead. On the way he picks up a cute sky-diving obsessed young woman (Tate -- who unfortunately has become a curiosity piece in the few movies she lived to make) who was also being sought out by a good-hearted and dull-witted Muscle Beach type (Drake).

The characters wind confusingly through each others lives until they come to a climax that needs better special effects than they had in 1967, and then the movie ends abruptly.

The movie shows lots of potential trying to get out. There are many good ideas thrown out. Some lie flaccid after being thrown out, others are merely thrown out and left to die.

The cast is full of surprises: Mort Sal as a wry house salesman, Edgar Bergen as a fortune teller, Jim Backus (as wife) as themselves, being hustled by Curtis into buying a pool! And this also proves how the movie went wrong. Edgar Bergen had a charming persona in his act, which (for those of you who don't remember) as a ventriloquist -- on the radio, no less. Instead of playing to his charming persona, they cast him as a waspish old man; and instead of playing on his ventriloquism to make the character wacky, they ignore it completely. They shoehorned a man with special talents into a part that could have been played by any competent actor, and which should have been played as a gift cameo part for someone who would pull out all the comedic stops (say,Paul Lynde?)

Pluses include the Vic Mizzy sound, and the fact that, and the obvious fact that none of the actors take the material seriously, except for Robert Webber, whom no one seems to have told was in a comedy. It's a movie that one watches the way one eats sour cream and onion potato chips if one doesn't like sour cream. The taste both repels and attracts. It's movies like this that ensured the decline of Tony Curtis' career.

This is one of a multitude of sex comedies Tony Curtis starred in around this time in his career; incidentally, I had seen about half of it some years back (also on Italian TV) but had to abort the viewing due to a bad reception!

Anyway, if the film is at all remembered today, it is primarily for two reasons: it not only marked the cinematic swan song of a great director, but was also the official Hollywood introduction of the beguiling but ill-fated Sharon Tate. Two more (if lesser) claims to fame should be the undeniably funny Chaplinesque ‘house-teetering-on-the-edge-of-a-cliff’ climax and the fact that leading rock band The Byrds perform the film’s rather charmingly light title tune.

Patchy and somewhat hesitant overall, it is nonetheless engaging and occasionally delightful; the satirical barbs aimed at L.A.’s muscle beach mentality (especially David Draper, the amiably moronic blonde hulk who is Tate’s boyfriend), the then-current astrological fad and businessmen indulging in extramarital activities often hit the target – even if with a much blunter edge than in Mackendrick’s previous film with Curtis, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957). Two other lively highlights of the film are the initial ‘meeting cute’ between Curtis and leading lady Claudia Cardinale (in which, as he tells her himself, she inadvertently manages to ruin his whole life in 30 seconds flat!) and the potentially disastrous sky-diving stunt performed by Tate and (unexpectedly) Curtis, which ends with both of them landing in his newly-inaugurated pool.

The film does benefit from a workmanlike cast: Curtis is in good form as an opportunistic young man who, while being compulsively pursued by the accident-prone Cardinale, becomes hopelessly infatuated with luscious, free-spirited beach girl Sharon Tate (her effortlessly sensual slow-motion exercises on the beach early in the film are quite disturbing to watch now when one realizes that she would die so horribly in less than two years’ time); Robert Webber is a swimming pool company executive driven to his wits’ end by lover Cardinale and the blackmailing schemes of Curtis, who soon shows his salesmanship skills by selling a pool to Jim “Mr. Magoo” Backus (playing himself) and a celebrity fortune-teller with the unlikely name of Madame Lavinia (played by famed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen).

While it is undoubtedly Mackendrick’s least (i.e. most inconsequential) film – and could well have been the reason why he left the profession and went into teaching – it’s a tribute to his mostly unsung genius that the film is as enjoyable as it is despite the evident flaws.