The quintessential 60’s farce, What’s New Pussycat? is provocative and over-the-top silly. It was a hot mess in 1965. And it still is today. Originally written for Warren Beatty (he greeted real-life girlfriends on the phone with “What’s new, pussycat?” apparently so he wouldn’t have to remember their names), it hasn’t aged all that well. It was a smash hit though in 1965 and set a box office record for a comedy. How could it not with Peter O’Toole fresh off Lawrence of Arabia, the all-star cast including Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress, and a promise of sex? What may have been a sidesplitting on the big screen is, with some exceptions, only cute fifty years later.

Woody famously said, “I had written what I thought was a very offbeat, uncommercial film, and the producers I turned it over to were the quintessential Hollywood machine…. Left to my own devices, I could have made the movie twice as funny and half as successful.” If only.

It was Woody’s first produced screenplay, and his comedy writing skills shine throughout, but the film as a whole is mostly noisy, frenetic mayhem. To be fair, Woody is credited with Original Screenplay and not the film that appears onscreen. I do see inspiration from Harpo Marx in the opening scene with Woody cheating at chess, getting caught, and raring back to clip his pretty opponent only to be restrained by Peter O’Toole. The unabashed camp, the Benny Hill-esque shenanigans, a hotel room scene reminiscent of the Marx Brothers’ in A Night At The Opera, uncredited and irrelevant cameos, roles added for friends or girlfriends or protégés, the all-star egos (the production was as much a farce as the movie itself), it’s a wonder it got made at all let alone set a box office record. Simply put, it’s a brainless, lively romp that’s fun and at the same time annoying.