User Reviews

I wish I could say that I loved this movie as wholeheartedly as others here do. I really *wanted* to love it. But no, I don't love it. Still, I do like it.

It's a really silly movie, bordering on stupid. The humor is really of a rather childish, broad sort; there's little here of cleverness or wit. As such, I got a number of chuckles out of the film, but few hearty laughs. To give you an idea, there's at least one gag in there that involves the use of fast motion (a la The Munsters).

But still, I enjoyed the film, and perhaps the biggest reason for that is the amazing cast. I stumbled onto this movie as a Tony Randall fan, and I was even more pleased when I saw that Shirley Jones costarred-- I loved her in The Music Man. But what blew me away was the supporting cast. This movie is a veritable who's who of the great character actors. We don't seem to *have* character actors anymore, but I'm a big fan of the great character actors of yesteryear, and this was the golden age of them. Character actors, for those who don't know, are those actors who were never really stars, but made a career out of playing interesting or oddball characters all over the place. Thus, they are the kind of people that you probably know the face without knowing the name. Let me list some of the ones who are in this film, with a clue or two of where you might know them from.

Dick Sargent plays the hotel front desk man. You know him as the second version of Darren on the old Bewitched show.

Edward Andrews plays the hotel manager. He was wonderful in two Twilight Zone episodes ("You Drive" and "Third From The Sun"), and played an admiral in Tora Tora Tora.

Ernest Truex plays the rich owner of the hotel, but you might know him from some fine old Twilight Zone ("Kick The Can", "What You Need") and Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("The Matched Pearl", "The Pearl Necklace") episodes.

Frank Faylen, who plays one of Earnest Truex's cold coot buddies, is better known as the father on the old Dobie Gillis show.

Jim Backus, the policeman behind the desk, costarred in the old Joan Davis Show, and did the voice of Mr. Magoo. He is best known as the millionaire on Gilligan's Island.

And Howard Morris, who plays the drunk guy, only did about a zillion cartoon voices; you'll surely recognize his voice.

And there's even the great Doodles Weaver, in a relatively tiny role (beats me why they even bothered to get him, he does so little).

So there you go. It's not a great movie, but if you don't take it too seriously, it's fun. Really, I gave it six stars for the film itself, plus an extra star for the great cast.

Oh, and the true star, the lion, really does an impressive job. I really don't know how they got that lion to be so well behaved.

I saw this on the big screen when I was a kid. This was the B movie. I can't remember what the A movie was. I absolutely loved this one. A month later, I had a school essay, where I had to write about a film I had seen. I chose this one. And began to encounter problems...

I would tell you what the plot is...but I can't. Tony Randall is a "Professor of Comparative Psychology". The institution where he works is raided by the police, who are investigating complaints about a lion he uses for his research. The lion is tame and gentle. The professor knows that. We know that. But nobody else does....After a fight with police, the professor and his lion flees, and they take refuge in an hotel that has apartments rather than rooms. After that, it is easy to lose the plot, because you are too busy laughing.

The main comedy device I noticed in this film is that if a character says or does something, or if something happens, other characters will misunderstand it. Of course this is not the first film to use this device. But I have never seen it used so often or with such intensity. Does it work in this film? Well, if I am creased up from start to finish, then it obviously does.

Tony Randall is a comedy actor who can be good in one film, and bad in another, depending on the script. This is one of his better performances, as he struggles to protect his lion from armed police and armed vigilantes. Of the rest of the cast, I would like to single out Edward Andrews as the hotel manager. The laughter is also at its loudest when the man who plays the dipsomaniac is on the screen.

And the hysteria can be realistic. In the UK some years ago a man thought he had seen a lion. He reported it to the police. And out of the woodwork came the armed police, armed volunteers, heat-seeking helicopters. Everything. And the round-the-clock search began. One of the helicopters spotted an infra-red image, but it was probably a badger. The lion was never found. So the film might exaggerate the reaction of the public and the authorities; but it is more or less accurate.

With this film, analysis can only get you so far. The best thing to do is to just watch the film. Watch it with the rest of the family. I've watched it as a child and as an adult. As an adult, I laughed all the harder.