Art of Love

This glossy, very silly but nonetheless enjoyable movie is an example of the Technicolored Universal 1960s style as produced by Ross Hunter. Like his Pillow Talk, this is bedecked with likeable stars and is a jolly pleasant way to pass the time. The would-be adult plot involves James Garner and Dick Van Dyke as struggling artists in a very Universal Studio Paris, with the ultra-glamorous Angie Dickinson and Elke Sommer as their lovers and the great Ethel Merman cast as a singing Madame. You don't want to know the plot: somehow Dick nearly gets sent to the guillotine for faking suicide to increase the worth of his paintings, or thereabouts. What's really strange, though, is how the undeniably talented Norman Jewison's direction is just so, well, anonymous.