I watched the second of the three movies I picked up the other day. It was The Americanization of Emily (1964). And while I really wanted to like, and even liked parts of it, and while I really like Julie Andrews and James Garner … ah, it just didn’t fly with me.
There are good parts to the movie but as a whole it doesn’t gel.
I wrote a review of it and as I say there, the satire wrestles with the romantic story and between the two they kind of cancel each other out.
As a general rule, I don’t like satire. I seldom find it satisfying. If it isn’t telling me what I want to hear, it’s hopelessly tedious. When it does tell what I want to hear (like this movie, Emily), it tends to be long-winded. I get impatient for an engaging story. And satire doesn’t usually deliver in this respect because a good story relies on good characters and satire tends to depend on caricatures.
Anyway … There are good moments in The Americanization of Emily but not enough to prompt me to give it a whole-hearted endorsement. At best, I’d give it a wishy-washy, “It’s okay. You could do worse.”
Tag: Classic Film, Movie Classics, Movies, DVDs
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