This is a genuinely funny movie. I noticed that another reviewer said it was "ridiculous". It's supposed to be wacky.Tony Curtis plays a college chemistry professor who is caught by his wife kissing (actually be kissed by) a young, female student. His wife (Janet Leigh) prepares to leave for Reno for a divorce. Curtis convinces his best friend (Dean Martin) -- a television writer -- to devise an excuse for the incident...and Dean comes up with the goofy story that they're both undercover FBI agents. Leigh not only falls for it, but gets very patriotic about it. The only problem is that the real FBI catches wind of the fakery, and so do real foreign agents. Dean and Tony end up in a floundering submarine...well, not really. How do they get out this one? It's all great fun and very tongue-in-cheek.Dean is so good here that he was nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor, and the film was nominated for best comedy. Everyone in the film does what he/she needs to do, including James Whitmore and John McIntire as serious, but puzzled government agents. And, there's even a cameo by Jack Benny.Top notch comedy. I give it a rare "8"! And, BTW, the common DVD release, which also has "How To Save A Marriage And Ruin Your Life" has a great transfer to DVD.

While Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh are considered the stars of this film, Dean Martin is practically a co-star in this Curtis movie doing a lot of the heavy lifting like Jack Lemmon often does in Curtis movies. The film starts with Curtis wife (Leigh) catching him (a college professor) kissing a college coed. From here, comes Dean Martin playing a TV script writer, trying to write Curtis back into his marriage to Leigh before she fly to Reno for a quickie divorce.The cover story is that Curtis is an FBI agent kissing the young girl on assignment. Then it gets complicated when James Whitmore (a real FBI agent) becomes interested in what Curtis & Martin are pulling over. This is screwball comedy done by the writer of Alfred Hitcock's only real screwball comedy (Mr & Mrs. Smith).What is most interesting is that the premise of the film hasn't changed. Today, if you catch your mate kissing (or doing) somebody else, you need an explanation or else you dump them. Usually the dumping is still the first instinct. In the case of this film, Leigh catching Curtis might have predicted the near future as 2 years later, they would divorce.There are at least 2 Martin songs & a special cameo by Jack Benny in this one. An interesting effort though the FBI line does wear a little thin about halfway through. Still, it is a nice diversion & the director has previous experience in this type of movie, so the pace & everything feel right here.

A trio of major stars, close to their peak of fame at the time, help to enliven this overdrawn farce based on a moderately successful Broadway play. Curtis is a university scientist who is canoodling with a female student when his wife Leigh walks in and catches him. In no time flat, she is packing for Reno to get a divorce and orders him out of the house by 7:00pm. Curtis's pal Martin, a writer for CBS television, helps to concoct a scheme designed to fool Leigh into calling off the split. He aids Curtis in convincing Leigh that they are FBI agents and that the girl being smooched was just a small part of a much bigger plan. After some deliberation, Leigh falls for the story, but thanks to a loose end from the props department at CBS, the real FBI gets involved and things become more and more convoluted and complicated from there. Curtis is appropriately manic and desperate as he tries to inject a sense of imperativeness to the silly and unrealistic plot. Playing a cheating husband couldn't have been too great a stretch for him as he admitted to fooling around on Leigh many times during their real life marriage and, in fact, would leave her for a younger girl only two years after this. Martin appears to be investing his role with a little more conviction than he would later in his Matt Helm series and tries to add texture to his performance (or is he just trying to steal focus?) by fiddling often with props. He's mostly second fiddle to Curtis, but does get to toss out a few zesty lines now and then. Leigh (saddled with an unflatteringly tousled hairdo) overacts with abandon in order to keep up with the guys' zaniness. She cuts a nice figure in her black cocktail dress, but has a pretty dense role to play. Fortunately for her, "Psycho" would come out the same year as this and immortalize her forever in a more flattering way. Some strong supporting players, notably Whitmore as a beleaguered FBI agent and Nichols and Lansing as a couple of bottle-blonde pickups, give their all in an effort to liven up the film. Whitmore very wisely underplays his role in contrast to the more broadly acted ones. Unfortunately, the play was dated before too long after its run and the film is badly dated now. The stage origins show through frequently despite attempts to move the action around. Curtis's apartment is interestingly laid out, though very artificial in nature. This was made at a time when the big trend was to involve the Russians (see also Leigh's version of "Bye, Bye Birdie") or to throw in a big, sloppy spectacle such as a pie fight or an overflowing washing machine. Here, the Russians make their obligatory appearance and the unlikely flooding of a New York City landmark accents the climax. It wouldn't be so bad if the script didn't take so long to set things up and dwell on so many unnecessary details along the way, but it would hardly matter because the whole enterprise is both inane and distasteful in any case. There's an odd layer of (unintentional?) homoeroticism dispersed throughout as well, with Curtis and Martin contorting their way through the machinations of the plot and Curtis nearly kissing a male Soviet agent. What it's got are three charismatic stars trying their best and some clean black and white photography, but what it's lacking is a compelling premise that is carried out proficiently.

I was always a Dino fan, still am all these years later, and this film makes me wish he and Tony Curtis had made a couple more of these in the 60s. Conventional wisdom says the real talent in Martin and Lewis was Jerry, and the real talent in Some Like It Hot is Jack Lemmon and not Tony Curtis, but when these two straight men, or at least straighter men, get together, this story gets as wacky as any Hope and Crosby, Martin and Lewis, or Abbott and Costello vehicle. Both guys can be as charming as always and as goofy and funny as their other partners, with Dino running away with a little more of the comedy than Tony. This one is strictly a guy flick, a boy's club guilty pleasure about two friends conspiring to repair a marriage with a made up story of FBI agents and Russian spies and beautiful women, and just has to be funny, especially when the real FBI, James Whitmore and John McIntire, and the real KGB, Simon Oakland and Larry Storch, get wind of it and turn up. Throw in the ever lovely Janet Leigh as Tony's wife, and the pre-silicone/saline implant miracles of Barbara Nichols and Joi Lansing as two blond bimbos Dino wants help schmoozing, and this becomes every post-pubescent boys dream come true comedy of the 60s. It looks like so much fun that you have to believe these people weren't even working when they made it. And just when you think they can't go any farther or get more ridiculous, they set off to "sink" the Empire State Building. These guys could have gotten Kong down without a shot! Without apologies to anyone, I just loved this one!