Word: cuting
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Ustinov's translation of play to screenplay retains the Broadway comedy's assets (the idea is cute) and liabilities (the idea is cute). Asked to laugh once again at the same back-slapping Americans and tractor-worshipping Russians who have populated every cold war farce, the viewer may well decide that what the world needs even more than international accord is some new international jokes. But the Ninotchka-era jokes are presented with considerable spirit, and Actors Gavin and Dee, the missile-crossed lovers, are cuddly as puppies. Writer-Director Ustinov gives himself the best lines and delivers...
...face is pretty, slightly cute, not startlingly beautiful. It has good bones, in the phrase of the fashion photographers, but it does not have great bones. It grins well, and has mastered the large-eyed look that goes with the expression "Ooooh!" But it is not very good at registering more subtle emotions ("Aaaaeee!", "Aaannh?" and "Mmmm!"). And nothing it shows in public moments is as intense as the faint crinkle of brow when, several times a day, its owner changes a mole into a beauty spot with a makeup pencil...
...images of lovely backwoods flora and fauna, the film has the artsy-craftsy exotica of Trader Vic's. The book's Anna Vorontosov was an interestingly unbalanced woman whose salvation came from the joyous dangers she found in teaching; the movie's Anna alternates between being cute and fighting for her virtue. One moment she plods through a witless musical routine about Pogo, the next she is braining Hero Harvey for ripping open her blouse (with cretinous whinnies of "Open sesame!"). And where it was right for the hero to blow his brains out in the book...
...silly-sickening newsreel of Reichs-kanzler Hitler at his first Cabinet meeting, bowing obsequiously to Von Papen, making cheesy smiles and cute little wriggles of politeness, playing Alphonse to Göring's Gaston over who sits in what chair and, in general, looking like a whey-faced, flabby postal clerk ill at ease in the company of his betters...
...animals take the spotlight only because of the way they become involved with it. The common theme that unifies the two films is the ways society can stifle and destroy the natural goodness of life. Needless to say, when natural goodness first appears, it is wagging its cute little tail...