5/10
Forced comedy-drama always gets good notices...but it doesn't even allow Peter Sellers anything funny to do
27 November 2005
Tiresome, uneven comedy-drama has two precocious (and, I thought, unengaging) teenage girls in New York making life miserable for an increasingly paranoid concert pianist (Peter Sellers). The kids are this young and they're hung up on a pianist?? Square screenplay makes its biggest mistake focusing on the strident youngsters and not giving Sellers ample opportunity to display his brilliant comic timing (perhaps the filmmakers thought his sheer presence would be enough). The entire last-half slips into teen-time melodrama and is a wash-out, losing the film's initial comic bearings and turning Angela Lansbury's society mother into an unnecessary monster. Director George Roy Hill once cited this as his personal favorite, but the film's schizo personality is unappealing. ** from ****
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