NEVER A DULL MOMENT
Directed by Jerry Paris
Written by AJ Carothers
Starring Dick Van Dyke and Edgar G. Robinson
Released in 1968
Directed by Jerry Paris
Written by AJ Carothers
Starring Dick Van Dyke and Edgar G. Robinson
Released in 1968
Even in the days of New Hollywood, somebody had to make movies for little kids and their grandparents. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, that somebody was Walt Disney Productions. Among the more popular features were Mary Poppins, That Darn Cat!, The Gnome-Mobile, The Jungle Book, The Love Bug and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Think of it as the politics of omission. Not once did Walt expose us to Vietnam, the struggle for civil rights, colonialism or air pollution.
Disney also quite proudly stole. Take Mary Poppins. Walt Disney did not invent that character. Mary Poppins came from the mind of a woman named P. L Travers in the late 1920s and first appeared in a short story called "Mary Poppins and the Match Man" in 1926.
Take the animated version of The Jungle Book. That was Rudyard Kipling in 1893 and 1894. The first version of the movie was an independent film released in 1942. Granted, Walt Disney's 1967 animated release remains an absolute classic in movie cartoons and some of the songs were first-rate, but they should have at least given something to Kipling's estate.
Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella: none of these were born in the mind of the mustacheo'd wunderkind. Yet I can guarantee that when you think of these movies, you attach the Walt Disney name to them. I can claim that because Walt Disney Productions made sure of it. Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney's Pinocchio, Disney's Cinderella. Pinocchio, whose name was roughly Italian for "pine seed," was written by Carlo Collodi in 1883. In the original story, Pinocchio kills The Talking (Jiminy) Cricket with a hammer and was himself eventually hanged and left for dead. The story was quite good enough for the children of the late nineteenth century, but the era of Walt's great discoveries required literary anesthesia. The original Snow White, based on the life of a woman who may very well have existed, was written by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 and the Wicked Queen was actually a vain stepmother. And the original Cinderella traces back to 7 B.C. when a Greek geographer named Strabo wrote a tale about a slave girl who marries the King of Egypt.
When Disney and Company tried to come up with something on their own--something post-Mickey Mouse--they usually delivered something more suitable to the waste management industry. One case in point: Never a Dull Moment.
Dick van Dyke plays the lead as a little-known actor who looks like a gangster and who gets involved in stupid crimes because Edward G. Robinson orders him to do so. The basis of the plot is that Van Dyke tries to get out of the mess before he either gets killed or arrested.
It should be admitted that of all the live action actors employed by Disney, Dick displayed the most talent, with Julie Andrews coming in a close second. And director Jerry Paris (who had worked with Van Dyke on the latter's TV show) did have a true gift for capturing comedic subtleties. But everybody here simply works too hard at their jobs and the enterprise becomes tedious within the first five minutes and never recovers.
Social relevance need not appear in a given movie. But at a time when even the major studios had reluctantly acknowledged that the kids who attended their movies might get killed in a pointless war in a few years, it would not have been asking much for Disney to have at least made mention of Vietnam (even allegorically) in one of his hundreds of pictures.
Disney also quite proudly stole. Take Mary Poppins. Walt Disney did not invent that character. Mary Poppins came from the mind of a woman named P. L Travers in the late 1920s and first appeared in a short story called "Mary Poppins and the Match Man" in 1926.
Take the animated version of The Jungle Book. That was Rudyard Kipling in 1893 and 1894. The first version of the movie was an independent film released in 1942. Granted, Walt Disney's 1967 animated release remains an absolute classic in movie cartoons and some of the songs were first-rate, but they should have at least given something to Kipling's estate.
Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella: none of these were born in the mind of the mustacheo'd wunderkind. Yet I can guarantee that when you think of these movies, you attach the Walt Disney name to them. I can claim that because Walt Disney Productions made sure of it. Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney's Pinocchio, Disney's Cinderella. Pinocchio, whose name was roughly Italian for "pine seed," was written by Carlo Collodi in 1883. In the original story, Pinocchio kills The Talking (Jiminy) Cricket with a hammer and was himself eventually hanged and left for dead. The story was quite good enough for the children of the late nineteenth century, but the era of Walt's great discoveries required literary anesthesia. The original Snow White, based on the life of a woman who may very well have existed, was written by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 and the Wicked Queen was actually a vain stepmother. And the original Cinderella traces back to 7 B.C. when a Greek geographer named Strabo wrote a tale about a slave girl who marries the King of Egypt.
When Disney and Company tried to come up with something on their own--something post-Mickey Mouse--they usually delivered something more suitable to the waste management industry. One case in point: Never a Dull Moment.
Dick van Dyke plays the lead as a little-known actor who looks like a gangster and who gets involved in stupid crimes because Edward G. Robinson orders him to do so. The basis of the plot is that Van Dyke tries to get out of the mess before he either gets killed or arrested.
It should be admitted that of all the live action actors employed by Disney, Dick displayed the most talent, with Julie Andrews coming in a close second. And director Jerry Paris (who had worked with Van Dyke on the latter's TV show) did have a true gift for capturing comedic subtleties. But everybody here simply works too hard at their jobs and the enterprise becomes tedious within the first five minutes and never recovers.
Social relevance need not appear in a given movie. But at a time when even the major studios had reluctantly acknowledged that the kids who attended their movies might get killed in a pointless war in a few years, it would not have been asking much for Disney to have at least made mention of Vietnam (even allegorically) in one of his hundreds of pictures.
