Frank Tashlin was never quite able to match his cartoon-based visual ideas with the round surfaces of live-action filmmaking. This piece of seminal schlock stars Jayne Mansfield as a va-va-voom gal whose gangland sponsor wants to put her over as a singing act when she really just wants to settle down and raise a family. Edmond O’Brien & Tom Ewell don’t exactly finesse the coarse material (though sidekick Henry Jones does), but the eye-popping sets & costumes along with a gaggle of early rock & rollers (especially the long forgotten ones) help the film’s painfully obvious satirical commingling of American sex & consumerism pass by amusingly. Tashlin, working with truly inspired source material, would, just once, put it all together in next year’s WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER/'57.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Largely tossed here, Garson Kanin’s novel DO RE ME retained its plot when musicalized by Jule Styne, Betty Comden & Adolph Gren for Phil Silvers in 1960 as DO RE MI.
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