The separate talents of James Garner and Dick Van Dyke should have guaranteed a better film than The Art Of Love. Still the considerable legion of fans both those guys have should be pleased. Not to mention that Angie Dickinson and Elke Sommer are along for the girl watchers.
The guys are roommates in a Paris flat Garner an aspiring writer and Van Dyke an aspiring painter, neither of whom has made their mark. But in Van Dyke's case as is pointed out painters only become legends after their demise.
Which while both are in a drunken stupor gives Garner a brilliant idea, especially when Van Dyke jumps into the Seine. He sells whatever he can find for a bundle and then when Van Dyke shows up they keep the fiction going. After that romantic complications set in and other kinds of complications set in as the gag goes way too far.
I really expected better. Garner's charming conman gets a bit hard to take. Van Dyke's gift for physical comedy and pantomime are served better in The Act Of Love. Ethel Merman has a part as a brothel madam and she's about as French as Anna May Wong. And what were a husband and wife pair of Jewish Delicatessen owners Irving Jacobson and Naomi Stevens doing here. More suggestive of Flatbush than the Left Bank.
Not the best work for any of the quartet of stars.
The guys are roommates in a Paris flat Garner an aspiring writer and Van Dyke an aspiring painter, neither of whom has made their mark. But in Van Dyke's case as is pointed out painters only become legends after their demise.
Which while both are in a drunken stupor gives Garner a brilliant idea, especially when Van Dyke jumps into the Seine. He sells whatever he can find for a bundle and then when Van Dyke shows up they keep the fiction going. After that romantic complications set in and other kinds of complications set in as the gag goes way too far.
I really expected better. Garner's charming conman gets a bit hard to take. Van Dyke's gift for physical comedy and pantomime are served better in The Act Of Love. Ethel Merman has a part as a brothel madam and she's about as French as Anna May Wong. And what were a husband and wife pair of Jewish Delicatessen owners Irving Jacobson and Naomi Stevens doing here. More suggestive of Flatbush than the Left Bank.
Not the best work for any of the quartet of stars.