Candy

Some films hold up fifty years later. Some don’t. This doesn’t. I recall thinking it was pretty funny, pretty racy, when it was new. Now it is just painfully silly. Ewa Aulin is Candy, who seems to drop to Earth from outer space, like Mr. Bean. She is clearly as naïve as a space alien. Then she is off on a series of adventures, meeting men who all want to take advantage of her. I read that Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg meant the 1958 novel this is based on as a satire on pornographic novels. Buck Henry wrote the screenplay. Not his best work.

Somehow the director, Christian Marquand, got some major stars to appear in this piece of shit. Ringo Starr is probably the worst, playing a Mexican gardener in a way that will make you wince. Then we move on to Richard Burton, taking a swing at comedy (and striking out) as a celebrity poet. (One actually funny touch that works: his hair is always blowing in the wind, even in a windless room.) Next is Walter Matthau as a crazed general commanding a robot-like platoon of paratroopers. I forget how we get from that to James Coburn as a celebrity surgeon, who performs operations to wild applause, and from that to a truly embarrassing performance from Marlon Brando, as an Indian guru. Like I said, maybe it was funny in its day, but I didn’t laugh this time.