The Great Bank Robbery Reviews

An alleged western comedy, well, that’s not an entirely fair description. It’s very much a western, but debatable as a comedy. An effective comedy requires a bit of energy, and The Great Bank Robbery is distinctly lacking. This is a shame since there’s an enviable roster of solid comedy actors, a few sexy movie stars, and a few solid smiles, but it never adds up to much of anything.

How do you cast Zero Mostel in a leading role and then muzzle his manic, scenery-chewing energy? Casting Mostel as a bank robber disguised as an evangelist is inspired, and one hopes that he’ll be allowed to run wild like he does in The Producers. No such luck here. The Great Bank Robbery keeps him oddly muted when it needed him to yell and bug his eyes out as much as possible. The choice of sacking him with a terrible musical number is just another unfunny bit they sink him with.

Even worse is populating the film with Sam Jaffe, Akim Tamiroff, Elisha Cook Jr., John Fiedler, and Ruth Warrick then leaving them with nothing to play. How do you stack the cast with so many wonderfully oddball career character actors and give them so anemic material? The Great Bank Robbery deserves a good thrashing for this cinematic sin alone.

Then there’s the sexy movie stars, Clint Walker and Kim Novak. They get some of the best bits to play, providing the few moments of half-hearted smiles from me. Novak gets to play her sexuality and screen siren persona for laughs, flashing her cleavage for laughs and feeding Walker peyote candy then seducing him. Walker plays the straight-talking, stuff-shirt good boy very well, and tries his best to keep it under control while drugged with Novak. Much like the solid supporting players and comedic actors, they don’t get too much else to play aside from these few moments.

Yet there’s nothing much to The Great Bank Robbery to inspire much passion either way. After the bizarre viewing experiences I’ve previously had in Kim Novak’s films, this one commits the cardinal sin of being merely boring and forgettable. I’ve felt far more passionate disdain (The Eddy Duchin Story) or camp appreciation (The Legend Lylah Clare) for several other films, and this one inspires a mere shrug from me.

It doesn’t matter much what it’s about, there’s too many players at work here, too much story to burn through in a short time, and no one gets any really golden bit. I suppose one could argue that sex symbols Walker and Novak stripping down could be that, but these moments feel more tacked on for salacious interest than for any humorous purposes. The New York Times review described this movie as “so casually inept it can’t support even negative superlatives,” and that’s a perfect summary of it, really. It’s there, but if you really want to watch a great western comedy, go watch Blazing Saddles.