ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

TheLittleSongbird Being based on short stories that are still of much great enjoyment now and having people as talented as Debbie Reynolds, Bob Fosse, Hans Conreid and Bobby Van, 'The Affairs of Dobie Gillis' had all the makings of being good-natured fun and being very difficult to dislike.'The Affairs of Dobie Gillis' is not necessarily a great film by all means, with a very thin, often meandering and at times non-existent story that feels like several comic situations/stories cobbled together and not much else. While most of the film is very entertaining and achieves what it set out to do very well indeed, there is always going to be the criticisms that some of the situations are unbelievably silly and that it's dated, so suspension of disbelief is needed.Fosse doesn't look so comfortable in his role in the acting department and his personality doesn't shine as much as when he is dancing.However, 'The Affairs of Dobie Gillis' is very nicely designed and quaintly photographed. The music fits very well and is more than listenable on its own as well, the standout song being the heart-melting "All I Do is Dream of You". When it comes to the choreography and dancing, Fosse in particular scintillates in a routine that brims with energy, clever choreographic flourishes and extraordinary dance technique.Regarding the script, it is here very light and bubbly, never trying to do more or be more complicated than needed. A good deal of it is silly too, but has such a good nature and has its heart in the right place that it is hard to be too hard on it. The film moves quickly and never feels dull, because the energy of the cast and the pleasant atmosphere moves things along so well.Despite having mixed feelings on Fosse (loved the dancing, didn't look at ease in the acting), the rest of the acting fares well. Van is at his most likeably earnest, while Reynolds is spunky and charming and Barbara Ruick is suitably peppy. In support, an amusing Hans Conreid, firm Charles Lane and tyrannical Hanley Stafford stand out in particular. The direction is more than competent throughout, having the right lightness of touch.On the whole, not a great film but an enjoyably good-natured and easily watchable one. 7/10 Bethany Cox

bkoganbing Previous to watching this film my frame of reference for Dobie Gillis was the television series that starred Dwayne Hickman in the early Sixties. So I was curious somewhat to see The Affairs Of Dobie Gillis from where the television series sprung.Other than Dobie you will not find a single character that came from TV show. And instead of high school the girl crazy Dobie who simply views his time at college as a romp with the opposite sex finds himself attracted to THE girl in the person of Debbie Reynolds.Life throws many roadblocks at the young couple, her parents, his teachers, but they do overcome of course. Bobby Van plays Dobie Gillis and he gets a few numbers to show off his singing and more important his dancing. Playing his best friend at the very start of his distinguished career is Bob Fosse and the two are quite the team. Fosse and Van came at the end of the musical cycle, but Fosse went on to Broadway as the most distinguished choreographer of his time. Barbara Ruick is also in the cast and she did way too few films, her best known being Carousel playing Carrie Pipperidge.The Affairs Of Dobie Gillis is a mildly entertaining film that probably is best known as it turned out, a TV Pilot.

Mrkitzle A very attractive cast and a couple of good musical numbers make for reasonably good entertainment. Far different from the TV series that came a few years later (and not as good in my opinion), this feature was actually inspired by the Max Shulman Dobie Gillis stories from the forties. Shulman, who also wrote the the screenplay for this movie, does manage to work in bits and pieces of his short stories into the script, but not too successfully. The reason for this is that the original stories were stand-alone brilliant comic masterpieces. Here we just see a little scene from this one, and one from that one, and so on. The way to really, really enjoy Dobie Gillis is to track down the out-of-print collection, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis"(easily available at Amazon). I'm a fan of the TV series, and I like this movie, but neither can hold a candle to the hilarious short stories that served as the original inspiration for both the TV and screen versions.By the way, it was only about two years ago that I read the original stories. They are every bit as wonderful today as when they were originally written.

Phil Reeder After I warmed up to the taller, goofier-looking Bobby Van (compared to Dwayne Hickman), this movie really took off for me. Like many others, I didn't know there was a movie six years before the TV series debuted. I'm only a casual fan of DG (it doesn't get shown enough these days) but still wanted to see how this early version compared to the show. I wasn't disappointed. I noticed a similarity between this picture and Disney's Merlin Jones movies. But whereas Merlin was this semi-genius, Dobie is an underachiever out for fun and females.Die-hard fans of Zelda will be crestfallen to learn that she is mercifully absent here. She is replaced by the much more feminine Debbie Reynolds, who ferments a good screen chemistry with Van; that's appropriate, as their most harrowing adventures take place in the chemistry lab (Pansy is fond of mixing assorted substances until they explode).But where is Herbert T. Gillis, Dobie's workaholic grocer old man seen in the series? He was my favorite character, mainly because of Frank Faylen's inimitable characterization (he was also hilarious as Dearborne in Disney's THE MONKEY'S UNCLE). Instead of Dobie's family we get Pansy's blustery workaholic father, who wants to separate the lovebirds forever. Has anyone else noticed, by the way, how fathers are perpetually portrayed as silly windbags, while the boring cipher wife/mother is forever made out to be the "wise" one? Even in the 50's.Strangely, it seems as though Dobie and Pansy only took two courses - English and Chemistry. And what about that chemistry prof, who boasts that his class is the hardest they'll ever encounter? Guess he never heard of Cartography at Radford U. After playing hooky (except when it rained) for several months, they return to class to find an essay due in English and a project due in Chemistry. I won't give away how they solve this crisis. But then the sky falls on our amorous pair. Deeming Dobie the worst possible influence, Mr. Hammer sends Pansy to NYC (blah - like that's the greatest place on earth to be sent) to live with her horrid maiden aunt. You really feel depressed for Dobie, now wandering aimlessly around campus. After all the scrapes they'd been through together - the chemistry lab explosions; the capsized canoe; and the most hysterical of all - Pansy's blouse getting caught in the car engine, then her trying to sneak past Ma and Pa and a couple of neighbors watching TV (yes, they had TV in 1953). Then when a gun goes off on TV, the startled viewers suddenly become aware of Pansy in her undergarments. That scene ended perfectly.All this brings us to some intriguing questions about college life in the 50's. Was it common for professors to write their own textbooks? We have the deliciously snobbish, condescending Hans Conried (Prof. Pomfritt) announcing that he is rewriting his "English Usage For College Freshmen", suddenly accepting Dobie's belief that the rules should be according to the way people really talk. C'mon, a single professor rewriting the rules of grammar? And did academic buildings really have bells to dismiss the students? Sounds like high school all over again. All classes beginning and ending at the same time. Well, I know one thing in the movie that's definitely based in reality: the way school bookstores buy back used books for pennies on the dollar, then resell them at a 90% markup. This textbook racket is still flourishing!Absent from AODG is Dobie's endless philosophizing in front of a marble statue. But I don't expect you'll really miss that.All in all, I recommend THE AFFAIRS OF DOBIE GILLIS to even the most casual fan of the TV series, and to anyone who likes college slapstick/romance from the 50's. I only wish this movie had been long enough to include more professors played by character actors on the caliber of Hans Conried. Or a series of 75-minute films, where Dobie and Pansy take Psychology, physics, French...imagine the constant jams they'd've been in and out of. I know Debbie Reynolds went on to bigger things, like voicing Charlotte in CHARLOTTE'S WEB and giving birth to Princess Leia, but she could've been replaced by some other bodacious 50's babe. And no, I don't mean Zelda.