WARNING - SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING FOLLOW
I can think of a simple way to make "The Ravishing Idiot" better: have the final twist (Bardot is actually a secret agent herself - and a capable one at that!) occur much earlier in the movie. Don't limit her to playing (quite well, it's true) the lovable ditz until the last 3 minutes, turn her smart sooner. As it is, we spend nearly the entire running time watching Perkins (whose character is not the brightest bulb either) and Bardot trying, and failing, to accomplish a mission that we know is pointless; the film is too long and there aren't enough laughs in it, although some of the visual gags do work. Also, given that "The Ravishing Idiot" was made in the liberated mid-1960s and that Bardot herself was at the prime of her sensuousness, it seems rather coy about showing "too much" of her - I'm not saying she had to be naked, but she didn't have to be covered up from head to toe for about 80% of the movie, either! ** out of 4.
And a warning about the Region 2 DVD: the subtitling seems to have been done by well-intentioned amateurs, so it has a number of spelling mistakes, and it sometimes disappears far too quickly from the screen.
I can think of a simple way to make "The Ravishing Idiot" better: have the final twist (Bardot is actually a secret agent herself - and a capable one at that!) occur much earlier in the movie. Don't limit her to playing (quite well, it's true) the lovable ditz until the last 3 minutes, turn her smart sooner. As it is, we spend nearly the entire running time watching Perkins (whose character is not the brightest bulb either) and Bardot trying, and failing, to accomplish a mission that we know is pointless; the film is too long and there aren't enough laughs in it, although some of the visual gags do work. Also, given that "The Ravishing Idiot" was made in the liberated mid-1960s and that Bardot herself was at the prime of her sensuousness, it seems rather coy about showing "too much" of her - I'm not saying she had to be naked, but she didn't have to be covered up from head to toe for about 80% of the movie, either! ** out of 4.
And a warning about the Region 2 DVD: the subtitling seems to have been done by well-intentioned amateurs, so it has a number of spelling mistakes, and it sometimes disappears far too quickly from the screen.