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What's Up, Tiger Lily? Actor: Woody Allen Directors: Woody Allen, Senkichi Taniguchi Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Color, Widescreen Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Running Time: 80 minutes Studio: Image Entertainment Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-07-15 Buy from Amazon |
 "It's just too funny!!!"This movie was definately one of the most hilarious i've ever seen. I don't think i ever stopped laughing! It's like you are looking at this serious old time japanese war flick but what you are hearing is so funny and the way it matches up to what the people are doing on screen makes it even more hilarious! It's brilliant! It's definately for everyone!  "The world can always use a great recipe for egg salad"Once upon a time there was a 1964 Japanese spy movie called "Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi" ("International Secret Police: Key of Keys." Then Woody Allen decided that if the Japanese could dub their monster movies into English, he could dub "Kagi no kagi" into English. The key difference, of course, is that Woody is trying to be funny on purpose. Whatever Interpol Agent Tatsuya Mihashi was up to in the original, he is now trying to track down a secret egg salad recipe. As somebody who actually remembers seeing this film in a movie theater, I still recall my roommate and I insulting each other and total strangers for several weeks with comments about "Roman dogs" and "Spartan pigs." I cannot really imagine committing this entire film to memory, but whether you are a fan of Woody Allen, badly dubbed Japanese movies, or James Bond spy movies, then you owe it to yourself to see this film once in your life. The most amazing thing is that this has not been done more often; after all, what bad movie could you not improve by totally redoing the dialogue and how much fun could you have doing something like this to a classic film like "Casablanca"? The Japanese original was actually followed by a 1967 sequel "Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Zettai zetsumi" ("International Secret Police: Driven to the Wall") starring Nick Adams a year before his death from a drug overdose. That film had something to do with killer foam (no, I am not making that up). "."...a salad so delicious you could PLOTZ!""Thus utters "Wing Fat", Japanese gangster and Wayne Newton lookalike, in Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" in reference to a much-coveted secret egg salad recipe. "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" has, in my opinion, always been looked upon as Mr. Allen's filmic poor relation. To the yuppified, nouvelle cuisine-eating self-appointed Allen "aficionados", "Tiger Lily" is a cinematic Nathan's hot dog. What a shame, because it is a very funny, unpretentious, inspired piece of nonsense. Mr. Allen took a 1960s Japanese James Bond [pretend] film, wiped out the dialogue track and, with the help of some very talented performers (including his then-wife Louise "Mary Hartman" Lasser), dubbed in some of the funniest dialogue ever heard on screen. I can't even guess what the plot of the original film was (it's actually pretty [darn] funny without the dialogue), but after Mr. Allen finished with it, the drama centers around the coveted egg salad recipe. The recipe has been stolen from Raspur, a "nonexistent yet real-sounding country", and rival bad guys Shepperd Wong and Wing Fat both want it for their own sinister purposes. Hero Phil Moscowitz (played by Matt Helm [pretend] Tatsuo Mihashi) plays double agent in this mishigas (in between his womanizing shenanigans, unsuccesfully trying to seduce Japanese dolls Miss Teri Yaki and her sister Suki). One must wonder which filmmaker copied who, because actresses Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi, who played the Yaki sisters, both went on to star opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond opus "You Only Live Twice" a few years later! I won't go any further into the plot line of this film, thin as it is, nor will I spoil the fun by quoting the dialogue, but I will simply say that the film is very, very funny and not for the slow-witted. The dialogue is a rapid-fire combination of Borscht Belt humor, and also prefigures the hilarious, brainy quips uttered by the 2 robots on "Mystery Science Theater". There's the obligatory cartoon violence (kick, punch, chop, shoot) and a somewhat superfluous musical score by John Sebastian and The Lovin' Spoonful, and footage of the 1960s rock group is interspersed throughout the film. Undoubtedly this was added to the film to attract the "young, hip" audience. At least the clothes, hairdos and dance steps of the "young folk" are worth a few laughs! And, of course, there are brief filmed interviews with Woody Allen himself, deadpanning and double-talking his way through all of this, making it even funnier, and a striptease by voluptuous China Lee, a former Playboy Playmate, providing even more Asian eye candy for the horndog viewers. "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" is a very enjoyable 89 minutes, but be warned-an hour later, you'll be hungry for more laughs again!  "Hysterical"The great overlooked Woody Allen comedy. There are a million great silly one-liners in this film ("They offend my sensibilities! Get them off the ship!"..."I don't know why, but you got a better bandage than me!"..."Everybody shows up when we have girls to tie up"). The plot is secondary, but who cares, this film is a riot released years ahead of its time. "Tiger Lily serves a Lovin' Spoonful of REALLY good Egg Salad"A woman steps into the room wearing a towel. She and her lover gaze longingly at each other. "Name three presidents!" she says. In the wake of his early success, Allen purchased the rights to an extra-cheesy Japanese spy thriller, threw out the entire soundtrack, then wrote and dubbed in a new script. Mix in a "what has this got to do with anything?" soundtrack by the folk-rock 60s group The Lovin' Spoonful and a few new scenes, and the result is Allen's infamous WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? And it is one of the most bizarre movies you're likely to see this lifetime, a film which has attained cult-movie status of the highest order. The movie is uneven--but that is actually part of its charm. Where else can you see big-haired 60s mamas get down like psycho killers to the innocuous music of The Lovin' Spoonful? Or tacky special effects, inept hop-and-chop fighting, and ridiculously bad cinematography reworked into the story of a bunch of spies on the track of a recipe for the world's best egg salad? And some of the lines are a hoot and a half. My own favorite: "Bring plenty of dynamite. It's a big mother!" Hardcore Allen fans, who often approach him as if he were God, will probably be embarrassed by this movie. Allen himself is pretty embarrassed: he's been trying to live it down for years. But if you have a taste for the bizarre--not to mention some good, I mean REALLY good egg salad--TIGER LILY is the movie for you. Recommended to egg salad junkies, bad hop-and-chop movie watchers, and cult-film enthusiasts everywhere. |
