Totally agree with your comments. There’s just something special about the successful TV series of the early and mid 60’s. I guess it would be the innovation and innocence of it all. Watching reruns of Petticoat Junction this month. Luv that tune…
Great song representing its era… late mod 60’s/early 70’s. However, the five year contract that Knott’s had with Universal was starting to fade. Time were changing. His previous movies (Ghost and Mr. Chicken/Shakiest Gun in the West) were fantastic. This one was more of a dud.
Knotts was not too thrilled about the subject matter of the movie, which is strange because Playboy was being read by just about every red blooded American male at the time. He still had that Mayberry persona hanging around his reputation, and that was pretty much played out as well. America was moving on from those Mayberry days. All In The Family was coming, and all the popular shows were being shelved. Jim Nabors, Andy Griffith, Don Knotts still made a few movies, but Lucille Ball, and all those heavyweights in the 60's were just about finished. Griffith had his show Matlock being successful, and it was always great to see Don Knots making a rare appearance. But notice they used the same gimmicks that they used in the Mayberry days. Mostly used for reminiscing. When you really think about it, that era of comedy was very much over. You watched it for a decade, and writers had to come up with a different style of comedy. The 70s was far different then the 60s were. Vietnam took a lot of the comedy out of the late 60s. And TV reflected on it, and television turned more serious than before. There were far more comedies that were successful in the 60s then the 70s. 70s heavyweights were Mary Tyler Moore, Three's Company, Sanford & Son. Most great comedies did not last very long. Get Smart, Green Acres, Hogan's Heroes. All gone. But the 70s had live audiences' shows being Top Gun. Carol Burnette Show. Happy Days, All In The Family. The Jeffersons. Really great shows. Good Times. And they were tackling subject matters no one would had dared dreamed of during the 60s! The only major flaw with Don Knotts, and the Universal movies he made was the fact that they were all predictable. I actually liked The Love God? more than The Reluctant Astronaut. I never understood why Lucy always tried to recapture that magic that was long gone from her comedy. She was on top of the world for more than 19 years, and by that last ditch effort to come back in what? 1977, it was all over. It was a totally different generation of TV viewers. And she was running Desilu studios. Very successfully. Today, long after her death, she is still the most recognizable face on television. She had not a thing to prove. Apologies for the length of my long comments!
@@tomodonovan5931Having just seen the movie, I think it suffered from coming out a few years too early. The script feels like it has one foot in the "safe" comedy of earlier years and another foot moving toward the raunchy comedies of the 70s like Blazing Saddles. The tone feels uneven as a result.
@@IsmailofeRegime Good point. The free love movement had not yet bloomed, so you were pretty much tuned in to what was going on around you. Caught in the middle of squeaky clean, and as you say raunchy. Europe was way ahead of America in the raunchy films in the sixties. America graduated when that Linda Lovelace flick came out in the early 70s. Excuse the pun, but she blew it out of the water! lol!
