WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
**
Officially, this is what started it all in the film career of Woody Allen. From this uneven, overlong mishmash of a movie, you'd never guess he'd go on to become one of the most talented filmmakers of the 20th century (as opposed to the amazing movie directors of the Renaissance). WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT goes from a semi-interesting sex farce to a stunningly long and inane conclusion that even includes a go-kart chase.
Peter "Pink Panther" Sellers plays a Don Juan who has women falling all over him. He gets plenty of sex out of it but is hounded by women wanting commitment. (Kind of a sex and race reversal version of SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT.) Sellers tells all his problems to his therapist (Peter O'Toole in a terrible black- haired hippie fright wig... it frightened me, anyway), who is infinitely more screwed up than any of his patients because he's dying of horniness. O'Toole throughout the movie tries to force himself upon woman after woman, in that light-hearted brand of sexual harassment humor bred only in the 60's.
Meanwhile, Allen himself has a minor role as Sellers' friend, who is in love with Romy Schneider, one of the women who wants Sellers to marry her. So Sellers, Allen and O'Toole all want Prentiss, although all three of them lust after scores of other beautiful women over the course of the movie. Allen ends up with Ursula Andress, "a close personal friend of James Bond," who sleeps with him after he buys a sports car.
For 1965, WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT has a surprising amount of sexual content. There wouldn't be a plot without the sex, even down to the characters' occupations. Sellers is a fashion magazine editor who has a regular parade of models in and out of his bed and Allen is the guy who dresses and undresses strippers at a nightclub for twenty francs a week. ("It's all I could afford," Woody remarks.) In his later films, Allen would reduce sex to a supporting role with his other favorite topics of death, God and food (in that order), but in WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT sex is the front-and-center theme.
Like the 1963 movie SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, the sexual tensions and desires from the first part of the movie manifest themselves in a wild, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink conclusion, but here the movie is severely hindered by the silly, convulted finale. In SEX, the conclusion was the best part of the movie, but with Woody Allen, a more laid-back verbal humor works best, not an overblown slapstick farce, particularly if he's only onscreen in a few scenes. When taking the starring role and directorial reigns in the early 70's classics BANANAS and SLEEPER, Woody would prove his talent for slapstick. But nothing is proven here, except that Sellers, Allen and Andress didn't learn their lesson the first time out. They would all three do much worse two years later with the 007 parody CASINO ROYALE.
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