Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter Essay

The writers of reviews for movies are effected by the factors that affect everyone: society and culture. There is no way for a writer to become disconnected from what they came from and it is unfair to ask anyone to write objectively; objective does not exist with opinions. With Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (dir. Frank Tashlin, 20th Century Fox, United States, 1956), critics framed the film in the comedy genre and in the reviews, focused on how the actors’ and actresses’ performances either were able to help or hurt the film’s goal of being funny and enjoyable to an audience. There is a distinct split inside of the small sample size of reviews I read on whether Frank Tashlin’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was a hit for a comedy or a complete, over exaggerated miss for the genre.
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times calls the film a “flimsy motion picture” with “reckless gags” (n.p.). Not exactly key words in a review that will get those reading the highbrow journal for period intellectuals into seats at the box office. Crowther has no praise for the film-adaptation of an original stage play. Crowther recognizes that the comedy and the narrative of the movie was supposed to bring people away from their TVs and into movie theaters
Even though they are on the same level. The critics of each review, McCarten and Roth, respectively, see the movie on polar ends of success. For McCarten the movie is “stale jokes, bad acting, and dull drama (75)”. Close to the other end of the spectrum, Roth wrote that the movie “on the whole the film is a good one (75)” along with saying that there are times when an audience member could stare into an empty popcorn box and be better off (75). A point of success for The New Yorker was that the film was not serious, as comedies should not be, and it went beyond expected standards by being able to spoof itself