What does it take to be a bad movie? 1. When your lead actor (Tony Curtis) gives the most wooden, lifeless performance of his career; 2. When your lead actress (Debby Reynolds), playing a reincarnated lady-killer, just about fondles herself on screen (in a rather disturbing scene) when discovering the change, and never really conveys the fact that she is a man's ghost in a woman's body; 3. When you cast a Playmate of the Year (Donna Michelle, 1964), list her among the principal actors, then briefly show her dancing at a party in the opening sequence, never to be seen again. 4. When your best performances come from Roger Carmel, of all people, as a homicide detective who suddenly arrives to throw the plot into a needless twist; 5. When you waste Pat Boone's talents (unfathomable as it seems) by having him play a rich boy wooing she-male Debby.This, no doubt, is one of the most disappointing movies I have ever seen. The writing is abysmal (one particular scene with Debby and Tony drags on for 15-20 minutes, and you wish for death to take you); director Minelli makes no attempt to elevate it above a filmed stage play; and the Cinemascope is so cluttered, one is often more interested by the props than the performances.One gem amidst the dross--Walter Matthau as a fraud Hungarian director. One hopes for Carmel's character to grill Matthau, but it never comes to be. Truly, one film to avoid at all costs.

A playboy is killed by a gangster and then returns to earth as a women (Reynolds). After a OK first fifteen minutes this thing really degenerates into complete boredom. The cast does nothing but sit and talk, and talk, and talk. Making annoying, dated sex jokes that are sad to think they were ever considered provocative. The low point comes when Reynolds confronts her/his killer and still nothing happens. They just sit and talk some more. These same sociological differences between men and women have been handled in far more interesting ways in far better films. Even Matthau seems out of place.

It's labored and '60s-smutty from the get-go -- a smirking sex farce with no good lines and most of the major roles miscast. But if you sit through it, you'll get Walter Matthau doing an outrageous put-on as a libidinous movie mogul, sort of a Hungarian Dino di Laurentiis. His accent's all wrong, he's not remotely convincing as a Lothario, and yet it's such an all-out, audacious vaudevillian turn, you can't help but smile at him. You won't at anything else.

I saw this movie for the first time over twenty years ago but could never remember the title. I saw it again on AMC and recognized it immediately, but my memories of it have strayed quite a bit from what I thought it was. In fact, this movie takes an amusing idea, a man in a woman's body, throws in some funny lines, but misses the point and goes no where. Tony Curtis plays a very funny straight man to Debbie Reynolds, and while she may have been attractive for the time, the outdated values and generation gap haven't exactly endeared this movie to a whole new generation. While still more enjoyable than it's recent re-make, "Switch" with Ellen Barkin and Jimmy Smits, the movie almost immediately drags after the opening sequences and sets up a premise that really goes nowhere. Pat Boone's role is seemingly tagged on as is Roger C. Carmel's, but Walter Matthau is nearly unrecognizable as a worldly skirt-chaser giving Reynolds something to run from. While I can't in good conscience give this a ten, the movie is worth while a look as a seven.