bkoganbing My first thought after seeing Don't Make Waves is that a lot of people, a lot of well to do people who bought beachfront homes the way Tony Curtis does and then see them lost to mudslides the way his is in the climax might have not seen the humor in all that. The $25,000.00 that Mort Sahl gets from Curtis for the home is nothing compared to what their delicate value is today. In fact Sahl is the smartest one in Don't Make Waves.Tony Curtis is a solitary tourist in southern California who through a series of wild circumstances loses his car and all his clothes and money and who Claudia Cardinale takes in as a poor vagabond.Cardinale is the kept mistress of Robert Webber who is playing his usual two timing rat villain that he does in serious and comic parts. But Curtis inadvertently picks up a piece of information that allows him to blackmail Webber into a job with his swimming pool company. Webber's telling a lot of tales to both Cardinale and wife Joanna Barnes who controls the pursestrings for him and the company.Curtis turns out to be an innovative and aggressive swimming pool salesman and life on the beach is great for him after he buys Sahl's place. His first meeting with Sharon Tate involves mouth to mouth resuscitation. If he can get passed her bodybuilder boyfriend David Draper. Draper is nice, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He's also the last word in biceps, 24 inch pythons as Hulk Hogan would put it.Don't Make Waves had Sharon Tate given 'and introducing' billing. Who could have predicted her tragic end?I was also not pleased with the resolution regarding Webber and Barnes. Today's feminists, even the next decade's feminists would be up in arms over it.Still Don't Make Waves has some good moments in it that will please Tony Curtis fans.

copper1963 Perfect posture and great bodies dominate in this oddball Tony Curtis comedy. Just about everyone in these reels of celluloid has a superb physique: Claudia Cardinale, Sharon Tate, and even the muscle men pumping iron on the beach. Hard to believe fact: this movie was based on a novel! Some of the bloated beach bums must have stumbled in from a "method" acting class. The leader savors every line of dialog as if it was Milton or Shakespeare. Weird. The setting is radiant to the eye. The special effects people deserve a gold metal for delivering some of the most realistic shots, up to that time, of the ground cracking open and an upscale villa sliding and tumbling down a steep embankment and into the surf. Impressive. It's sad to see Sharon Tate--so young and pretty--just three years before the Manson Gang got their hands on her. Miss Tate's character is skilled in many physical pursuits: trampoline and skydiving included. In one improbable scene, she saves Tony Curtis, James Bond-like, by strapping herself to the free-falling con-man. Miss Cardinale has the curves to match her rival, but she is straddled with shrill dialog and a cranky demeanor. Jim Backus plays himself and performs his "Mister Magoo" routine. I think the movie works so well because it perfectly captures the Southern California scene at a time when many things were changing--and not always for the best. The mid-sixties was the last gasp of a more innocent time and cinema. View after midnight--it rocks.

Ephraim Gadsby "Don't Make Waves" -- is it an attempt at an mature beach movie? A spoof of beach movies? A midlife crisis movie? A Tony Curtis-as-middle-aged-hustler movie?Tony Curtis plays a not-so-young man whose life is ruined and all his earthly belongings destroyed by an accident prone mistress (Cardinale) of an obnoxious pool magnate (Webber). Curtis worms his way into the pool company -- apparently not to wreak revenge (or is it) but just to get ahead. On the way he picks up a cute sky-diving obsessed young woman (Tate -- who unfortunately has become a curiosity piece in the few movies she lived to make) who was also being sought out by a good-hearted and dull-witted Muscle Beach type (Drake).The characters wind confusingly through each others lives until they come to a climax that needs better special effects than they had in 1967, and then the movie ends abruptly.The movie shows lots of potential trying to get out. There are many good ideas thrown out. Some lie flaccid after being thrown out, others are merely thrown out and left to die.The cast is full of surprises: Mort Sal as a wry house salesman, Edgar Bergen as a fortune teller, Jim Backus (as wife) as themselves, being hustled by Curtis into buying a pool! And this also proves how the movie went wrong. Edgar Bergen had a charming persona in his act, which (for those of you who don't remember) as a ventriloquist -- on the radio, no less. Instead of playing to his charming persona, they cast him as a waspish old man; and instead of playing on his ventriloquism to make the character wacky, they ignore it completely. They shoehorned a man with special talents into a part that could have been played by any competent actor, and which should have been played as a gift cameo part for someone who would pull out all the comedic stops (say,Paul Lynde?)Pluses include the Vic Mizzy sound, and the fact that, and the obvious fact that none of the actors take the material seriously, except for Robert Webber, whom no one seems to have told was in a comedy. It's a movie that one watches the way one eats sour cream and onion potato chips if one doesn't like sour cream. The taste both repels and attracts. It's movies like this that ensured the decline of Tony Curtis' career.

moonspinner55 A very flaky comedy, a perplexing mix of moods involving Southern California hustler Tony Curtis with an accident prone actress, her married lover, and an assortment of beach bums and bunnies. A curiously lackadaisical pace, an almost dream-like non-focus, and the blithe, throwaway performances don't especially give the proceedings an edge, but they do help the movie stand out from other films in this genre. But what genre is it exactly? It isn't a laugh-out loud comedy, it isn't a character study, it isn't brainless but neither is it particularly witty. Just an occasional big laugh, and it certainly looks good. Sharon Tate gets an "introducing" credit, just as she did on "Eye Of The Devil" released the year before. Her role as "Malibu" is utterly undemanding, but still it's nice to see her having fun. ** from ****