The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (1966)

I really wanted to like this movie more then I ended up liking it. This is the only movie, to my memory, that my dad specifically mentioned his dad taking him and his siblings to see in the theater. As a result of knowing that I've long had a presumably greater then average curiosity about the film, I simply hadn't gotten around to seeing it. Directed by the versatile Norman Jewison from the novel 'The Off-Islanders' by Nathaniel Benchley, who was the son of noted humorist Robert Benchley and the father of 'Jaws' scribe Peter Benchley. It is the story of a Russian sub that accidently runs aground on a small Massachusetts island, they send a small team onto the island to secure a boat to tow the sub out to see, but in process of doing so set off a panic among the islands inhabitants. So this is a satire of both the cold war and small towns. The principal players being the Russian first officer, and the husband and wife of the first family he and his team come across, played respectively by Alan Arkin, Carl Reiner, and Eva Marie Saint, all of whom remarkably are still alive more then 50 years after this film came out.

The movie has its moments, and I certainly admire the 'ecumenical sprit' of the thing, the Russian's aren't depicted as bad people and the Americans are depicted as prone to overreaction. I thought the movie too often slow, and the dryer moments of humor worked better then the more slapstick bits. The ending is hokey but effective, though a bit of a turn on a dim and wouldn't hold up to much scrutiny were this a film that would require that. A feel good gentle ribbing of a movie, a lesser 'It's Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' that really resonated at the time, making more then $21 million on a $4 million budget. **1/2