This film and "The Busy Body" are the two forgotten comic gems of the 1960s in that genre of films where all the prominent comedians appeared together. We recall "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming?", "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines", "Monte Carlo, or Bust?", and "The Wrong Box". But these two films not recalled, probably because the settings are not as colorful as the other films. Several of them are period pictures, one is set on Nantucket Island, and one is a type of cross-country chase based on greed. Greed plays a part in "Who's Minding the Mint?" and "The Busy Body", but the settings (while unusual in both films - here with a government building at night, and a sewer transversed by row boats, the other one dealing with a barbecue on a skyscraper's terrace and a corpse set up on a bench with a woman trying to vamp it)are not quite as colorful.
I like both movies, and this one is funny for reasons starting with it's cast and going through the routines and shticks they throw up. Victor Buono normally played villains or neurotics in films (even in comedies like "Four For Texas", but also "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, where he wasn't the actual villain). Here he is a sea captain, who has dreamed of building a great sailing boat. Unfortunately he captains the little boats on a kiddie ride in the park. Milton Berle is a successful pawn shop owner, who lets his greed get the better of him - and neatly expands the complications of plotting in the film. Bob Denver, nominally an ice cream truck driver, turns into a sex idol. Jack Gilford is a great safe cracker, but he has gone deaf in prison (don't ask), and now needs a good hearing aide to hear the tumblers fall into place. So it goes on and on. Even Joey Bishop finally had a decent comic turn here as a man with a serious gambling problem. The Rat Pack films never served him as well. Jim Hutton and Dorothy Provine make a nice, appealing couple, with Walter Brennan as a type of fairy "godfather" to them.
But there is a cute lesson about the true value of paper money. Supposedly the level of paper currency is watched to prevent inflation like that type which Weimer Germany had in 1922-23. But the plot involves reprinting much paper money to cover an error, and then some. As this would be included in the official records of the printing plant, it would be subsumed into the normal level of money printed each year. Nobody would ever notice the additional greenbacks that have been printed illegally. So if the record conforms perfectly, there is no actual counterfeiting. So much for the value of paper money...at least in this movie's point of view.
I like both movies, and this one is funny for reasons starting with it's cast and going through the routines and shticks they throw up. Victor Buono normally played villains or neurotics in films (even in comedies like "Four For Texas", but also "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, where he wasn't the actual villain). Here he is a sea captain, who has dreamed of building a great sailing boat. Unfortunately he captains the little boats on a kiddie ride in the park. Milton Berle is a successful pawn shop owner, who lets his greed get the better of him - and neatly expands the complications of plotting in the film. Bob Denver, nominally an ice cream truck driver, turns into a sex idol. Jack Gilford is a great safe cracker, but he has gone deaf in prison (don't ask), and now needs a good hearing aide to hear the tumblers fall into place. So it goes on and on. Even Joey Bishop finally had a decent comic turn here as a man with a serious gambling problem. The Rat Pack films never served him as well. Jim Hutton and Dorothy Provine make a nice, appealing couple, with Walter Brennan as a type of fairy "godfather" to them.
But there is a cute lesson about the true value of paper money. Supposedly the level of paper currency is watched to prevent inflation like that type which Weimer Germany had in 1922-23. But the plot involves reprinting much paper money to cover an error, and then some. As this would be included in the official records of the printing plant, it would be subsumed into the normal level of money printed each year. Nobody would ever notice the additional greenbacks that have been printed illegally. So if the record conforms perfectly, there is no actual counterfeiting. So much for the value of paper money...at least in this movie's point of view.