Back in 1969, people where groovy. I mean, they were cool cats and chicks and didn’t let conventional moralities stand in the way of a good time. No sire, not them people back then. So how is it that a movie studio picked four of the least groovy people I’ve ever seen to make a movie called Where It’s At? A couple of clues: the movie was backed by the prototypical ’60s conglomerate ITT (Harold Geneen’s less than synergystic attempt to prove that management is management) and was written and directed by someone whose best work was 15 or more years in the past, Garson Kanin.
David Janssen stars as the fictitious owner/operator of Ceaser’s Palace in Las Vegas, Robert Drivas is his semi-estranged, just-graduated from Princeton son, Rosemary Forsyth is Janssen’s new wife, and Brenda Vaccaro made her movie debut as Janssen’s under-appreciated secretary. Forsyth, at least, comes within a smidgen of groovy but the other three miss by a mile. Don Rickles even makes a cameo playing a dealer who tries to sneak a scam past the sky in the eye; Janssen busts him down to dishwasher, literally, to repay his debt.
Drivas should have had an easy time of it but Kanin seems to have been unable to buy a clue about the younger generation. Janssen’s acting can best be described as early screaming; almost every line he utters right until his comeuppance is delivered with a gruff, barking tone, even when his character is trying to make nice with the wife or son. Vaccaro is sweet but her part just makes no sense at all–for most of the movie her Miss Hirsch is just a typical harried executive assistant until, out of the blue, she appears in nightclothes in Drivas’ suite and asks him for a night of passion before she leaves Las Vegas.
Kanin, who wrote and directed Where It’s At, was retired for most of the ’60s and I’m thinking he should have stayed that way even if he was only in his late 50s when making this. His reputation was built on some terrific films–Tracey and Hepburn in Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike, the Jayne Mansfield trash classic The Girl Can’t Help It, and a few films with Judy Holliday. This clunker seems like an attempt to update that vibe for the Swinging ’60s but turns out as just another father-son melodrama with plot points winked at instead of built solid.
Not recommended
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