One thing you can say about Steve McQueen is that he learned from his mistakes. He wasn't happy with his performance in this lacklustre farce and never made another comedy, which, on the evidence of this display, is something we can all be thankful for. The story has navy man McQueen and scientist Jim Hutton combining forces to break a Venetian casino with the aid of a super-computer called Mac. Perhaps if they had some compelling reason other than greed and the desire for personal gain we would be able to get a little more involved in their escapades, but they're only in it for the money and, after half-an-hour or so, we end up wondering why we're still in it.
The movie quickly descends into farce, with the situation growing increasingly silly. McQueen hooks up with Julie Fitch (starlet Brigid Bazlen) daughter of an admiral (Dean Jagger) who is staying in the hotel room upstairs and who, spying the signals bouncing back and forth between McQueen and the ship on which Mac is located, mistakenly believes he has stumbled upon an imminent revolutionary uprising. Jagger plays it straight, which makes his one of the film's better performances. Jack Weston's signalman is an annoying character, but Weston manages to wring a few laughs out of his antics. The biggest laughs, however, come from the lovely Paula Prentiss as Hutton's short-sighted heiress girlfriend and from McQueen's sly, blink-and-you-miss-it scope of Bazlen's rear when they first meet.
The movie quickly descends into farce, with the situation growing increasingly silly. McQueen hooks up with Julie Fitch (starlet Brigid Bazlen) daughter of an admiral (Dean Jagger) who is staying in the hotel room upstairs and who, spying the signals bouncing back and forth between McQueen and the ship on which Mac is located, mistakenly believes he has stumbled upon an imminent revolutionary uprising. Jagger plays it straight, which makes his one of the film's better performances. Jack Weston's signalman is an annoying character, but Weston manages to wring a few laughs out of his antics. The biggest laughs, however, come from the lovely Paula Prentiss as Hutton's short-sighted heiress girlfriend and from McQueen's sly, blink-and-you-miss-it scope of Bazlen's rear when they first meet.