Delayed Reaction: What's Up, Tiger Lily?

The Pitch: Woody Allen and friends re-dub a Japanese spy movie to make it about something else entirely.

Here's the idea: No filmmaker is as prolific over as long an amount of time at a major level as Woody Allen. Not that I know of, at least. So, I think it would be fun to work my way through as much of his filmography as I can to trace his evolution as a filmmaker and maybe see how that's reflected in the larger cinema landscape. In other words, how is a 1980s Woody Allen movie from a 2010 Woody Allen movie and are they different in similar ways to other movies from both of those periods? This isn't a formal project like Club 50 was/is and there's no timeline on it. In fact, I doubt there will ever be a formal examination of it where I explain my findings...That kind of makes this entire paragraph pointless. Oops.

That nebulous project is the only reason I bothered with What's Up, Tiger Lily? It's Allen's debut directorial feature and that's apparent. Before this, he was mainly known as a writer and performer. What's Up, Tiger Lily? is a clever way to break into directing, because he really didn't direct it in the traditional sense. He rewrote it and reedited it. There's a couple new scenes in there, specifically with The Lovin' Spoonful. However, he didn't do any of the directorial heavy lifting. That'll begin with Take the Money and Run a few years later.

What's Up, Tiger Lily? is reminiscent to what Will Ferrell and writer Andrew Steele like to do: movies in which the joke is the premise (Casa de Mi Padre, A Deadly Adoption). This winks a lot more though. It's fully addressed as one big joke. I wasn't surprised to learn that apparently Allen made this as a TV hour and the studio turned it into a theatrical release after the fact. The humor is thinner than I'd expect from Allen's work even a couple years later like Love & Death or Sleeper. The parts I most enjoyed were actually the cutaways to Woody Allen that explained the movie. Allen is a gifted comedic performer. He hasn't actually tried in years, so people have forgotten that. In 1966, he was still young and hungry and knew how to milk a laugh out of a line read as good as anyone.

This is a forgettable movie. It does help mark Allen's transition from writer to writer/director in a way that makes a lot of sense though. And, for that reason, it has value.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend