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Logan's Sayonara is cited, though the form looks back to Fuller's House of Bamboo. The Great Wooley, a penniless magician on a USO tour in Tokyo, Jerry Lewis properly paired with a rabbit that strikes the Bugs Bunny pose leaning against their luggage trunk. "I'm gonna get you carrots with sukiyaki sauce!" His clumsiness is such that just getting off the plane means tripping the headlining bombshell (Marie McDonald) down to her garters and nylons, a spectacle that tickles a somber little orphan (Robert Hirano). A Hollywood tale waiting to happen, "in VistaVision and Technicolor" according to the liaison officer (Suzanne Pleshette) who can't compete with the tyke's aunt (Nobu McCarthy). "Hoo hoo hoo! I'd like to chop chopsticks with her anytime." A Frank Tashlin beaut, from the director's title card obscuring a fan dancer's torso to the gelled lighting emanating from silk screens. The interpreter's jealous beau (Ryuzo Demura) is a towering baseball pitcher whose "famous Nipponese sideways curve ball" finds its way into the heckling Yank's maw, and whose splash at a bathhouse floods the neighborhood. Top-hatted Lewis among explosions in a Korean foxhole is emulated in Lester's How I Won the War, a matter of communication: "We don't understand each other and the subtitles are all mixed up." Bob Hope dubbed on the telly, Mount Fuji suddenly lit like the Paramount logo, Sessue Hayakawa back in imperial fatigues as the grandfather working on a miniature of a certain bridge. The reworking of Chaplin's The Kid subsequently becomes the star's refraction (The Family Jewels), the upshot is a fresh litter on an integrated stage with a Merrie Melodies sendoff. De Palma evinces a surprising consideration in Get to Know Your Rabbit. With Barton MacLane, Teru Shimada, and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
--- Fernando F. Croce |