Posted on 07/28/2024 12:43:18 PM PDT by Twotone
Snip
It's hard to tell today how the satire in The President's Analyst landed when it was released at the end of 1967. It's reputed to have bombed at the box office despite more than decent reviews; Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times compared it favorably as a comedy to The Graduate and Bedazzled (two contemporary satires that time has treated very differently), but I can't read Ebert's affable review ("modern and biting, and there are many fine, subtle touches") without suspecting that he was swept up in the groovy zeitgeist, unwilling to go all squaresville and rain on the film's Technicolor parade.
Over subsequent decades, though, it blended in with so many other superficially similar movies, from the "zany" comedies produce by the major studios (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Who's Minding the Mint?) to the countless 007-derivative spy spoofs (Casino Royale, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, Dean Martin's Matt Helm pictures, James Coburn's Flint films) to semi-credible attempts to capture the youth market (The World of Henry Orient, The Party, What's New Pussycat?) to wholly incredible ones (Way, Way Out, The Happening, Skidoo, I Love You Alice B. Toklas, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine).
With time The President's Analyst has sorted itself into a small group of curiosities produced when major studios and minor hopefuls were dancing on the wreckage of the Production Code and trying to absorb some counterculture credibility – pictures like Bedazzled, The Magic Christian, Lord, Love a Duck and Putney Swope. In general, though, it's not an era that gets recalled as a golden age.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
President’s Analysis is absolutely one of my favorite movies.
I lived those times and can fully appreciate the overt and subtle humor.
Somewhat prophetic as well. Technological development turned out different. But, “The Phone Company” today is pretty close to the movie version.
In the late 1960s, my French language Professor spoke glowingly about the Dudley Moore satire "Bedazzled."
About 40 years later, I channel surfed into Bedazzled on cable and watched about a half hour of it.
I thought it was silly, repetitive, almost slapstick comedy.
Not sure why the Intellectual Elites of the 1960s praised it.
Mocking Christianity, perhaps?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.