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I checked out this film because I had somehow missed it over the years and was curious about it. After all, I think most everyone knows the title, whether they were interested in the film or not. I was expecting that it might be really bad, the kind of film you give up on halfway through. Surprisingly it was a very pleasant, light comedy that still worked for the most part.It’s worth seeing for some laughs, just don’t expect anything uproarious.
The “All-Inclusive” packaged European tour lightly satirized in the film was a post-war phenomenon especially popular with Americans. The phrase that became the title had been around since the fifties. It first appeared in a 1957 New Yorker cartoon in which two women stand with a group outside a tour bus with one looking disgruntled and saying, “But if it’s Tuesday it HAS to be Siena”. In 1965 it inspired a “60 Minutes” segment with the same title as the film about these kinds of tours. Director Mel Stuart had a long career almost exclusively directing documentaries, mostly for television, and continued to do so into the 2000’s. It’s likely he watched “60 Minutes, and was inspired to do a movie version of the idea.This was his first non-documentary movie, though later he also made “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in 1971.
His not being a standard studio director of comedies seemed to help. Hollywood put out some really bad comedies in the mid-to-late sixties. They seemed to simply want to expand TV sitcom plots into full-length movies and this didn’t work. The paper-thin plots of an average sitcom just didn’t lend themselves to a 90 minute expansion. Also, as the decade wore on, comedies often became zany and over the top in a way that wasn’t believable and often led to irrelevant slapstick. Some of Doris Day’s late comedies were marred by these approaches.
Coming in from the world of documentaries, Stuart was free of all this and made his own kind of film. The tone is fairly realistic and though there are laughs and some genuinely funny lines it never veers off course into becoming madcap and cartoon-like. It is essentially a gentle film. Though it was filmed in 1968 and released in 1969, the humor of travel is so universal that most of the experiences and jokes are believable.
Coming from television probably also helped him assemble such a large, experienced cast, who really make the film work. An audience back then would recognize almost everyone though they probably wouldn’t be able to name them. Most of the principals had long resumes that included dozens of TV shows and went on to do more. Some had been regulars in a series like Marty Ingles (“I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster), Luke Halpin (‘Flipper”) and Pamela Britton (‘Blondie”). Others would be series regulars later on like Suzanne Pleshette (“The Bob Newhart Show”) and Patricia Routledge (‘Keeping Up Appearances”).
Peggy Cass had an Oscar nomination for “Auntie Mame” but was better known to the audience from her many appearances on game shows. Mildred Natwick had had a long career on Broadway and film, having started out as a favorite of director John Ford, and had been a major player in Hitchcock’s “The Trouble With Harry”. Sandy Baron was a popular comedian. Vittorio De Sica, who plays the Italian shoemaker was a famous and revered film director who jump- started the neorealist films of the postwar era. All in all, this is a cast of great character actors who know how to play these roles, compared to an “all-star cast”, where everyone might be trying to get more screen time.
The story is simple. After a series of vignettes which sets up the reasons everyone decides to go on “World-Wind Vacation Tour #225” they all assemble in London for a tour that will include the Low Countries, Rhineland, Switzerland and Italy. The central figures are Suzanne Pleshette, absolutely warm and lovely as department store buyer Sam (Samantha) Parker and Ian McShane as Charlie Cartwright, the tour leader who is a kind of Alfie-like character with an eye for the ladies, who is constantly chasing Sam. The development of their relationship is the center of the film, around which all the rest happens.
There is a certain built-in problem with a cast this large - many more than I have mentioned - and that is that there is no time to really develop them or even give them much to do. While a few get their own vignette, many have only a single characteristic that identifies them. One takes photos of beautiful women, one writes postcards, one gets separated when she gets on the wrong tour bus. Murray Hamilton plays the guy who’s always complaining, but gets many funny lines because of this. This is just the way it has to be with so many actors.
Though it’s shot on location, not too much of a big deal is made about the sights, unlike, say, a fifties film where a second unit would have filmed extensive footage; back then movies made a big deal that they weren’t on a soundstage but by now it wasn’t such a big deal. It is, however, the late sixties and the film is somewhat of a time capsule of that period - but only so much, since this is about a bunch of middle aged American couples and singles on a tour, not some countercultural backpackers. They stop at Carnaby Street, and while it wasn’t 1966, it was still a happening place.
Another period reference is part of what I think is the film’s weakest subplot. The eighteen-year-old daughter (Hilarie Thompson) of one couple is brought along on the trip when she is caught making out with her boyfriend. She meets Bo, a sixties radical who is travelling Europe to organize protests.(Bo is played by Luke Halpern from “Flipper” and I didn’t recognize him until the final credits). For one thing, he’s too well-groomed for a campus radical in 1968, and looks more like a contestant on “The Dating Game”. Their romance should be sweet and one of the highlights of the film but instead seems flat and reduced to a couple hellos. There seems to be little connection. My guess is that a lot of their scenes had to be cut for time.
A final evocation of the late sixties is the appearance of Donovan as a singer in a youth hostel where daringly, for this kind of film, marijuana use seems to be occurring. Donovan peaked in 1966-67, his ‘Sunshine Superman”- “Mellow Yellow” period but still had hits in ‘68 and ‘69. He sings the theme song offscreen and “Lord of the Reedy River” here, a song which at that time had only been recorded by Mary Hopkin. It would eventually appear on the little-known album “H.M.S. Donovan” in 1971.
There are lots of cameos by well-known actors from Robert Vaughn to Joan Collins, John Cassavetes to Anita Ekberg. It’s enjoyable and worth giving a try.
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Disc would not loadTried on 3 diff machineTotal waste of time
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DOES NOT PLAY WITH ENGLISH AUDIO!!!!!!!!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 25, 2022jg
blu ray disc doesn't have original sound in English
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 18, 2021JULIE HALL
Fabulous Film - enjoy the highlights of Europe from your own arm chair!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 28, 2019Gunnel Arrbäck
The Title Tells it All
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 3, 2012
