An affectionate homage to Los Angeles, Mackendrick's last film offers a sunny dream of mid-1960s Malibu as a small town of surfers, bodybuilders, real estate agents and movie stars. Tony Curtis returns, in a softer version of Sweet Smell's desperate huckster, as a transplanted New York salesman who lands in the romantic comedy landscape of speculative real estate and romance, caught between a radiant Claudia Cardinale as a giddy Italian actress and a tragically beautiful Sharon Tate as a beach blanket beatnik. Mackendrick’s underappreciated satire of California hedonism and the war between the sexes remains one of his broadest and most accessible comedies.
