Pretty mid-1960s sex comedy set in Paris, filmed on Universal's back lot, but extremely well faked. It's a rather dark-hearted farce about two buddies, an artist (Dick Van Dyke) and writer who doesn't write much (James Garner) who fake Van Dyke's death to raise the price of his paintings. That in itself is pretty tired satire, and it gets more tired when we're introduced to the two men's ladies, a suicidal local girl (Elke Sommer) and Van Dyke's wealthy fiancee (Angie Dickinson), who faints a lot and gets passed between the two guys like a soda. There's also a cabaret-owner-and-probable-madam (Ethel Merman in a series of bizarre wigs), a Jewish deli owner (Irving Jacobson), a fervent private investigator (Pierre Olaf), and a fair amount of slapstick. Van Dyke's expert and does some cute pratfalls; Garner, playing a real rotter, is atypically shrill and charmless. Dickinson hasn't much to offer but a series of eye-popping fashions, and Sommer is unaffected and delightful. A few laughs, but Carl Reiner and Norman Jewison, having recently delivered "The Thrill of It All," were capable of far better.

Two of the most likeable actors of the 1960s, James Garner and Dick van Dyke (fresh off "Mary Poppins") headline this dog of a movie.

The promising premise: Garner, a struggling writer, and van Dyke, a struggling painter, share digs in Paris.

Van Dyke, living cheaply off his American fiancee (Angie Dickenson), decides to chuck painting and go home. Garner, sponging off him, desperately comes up with a scheme where van Dyke pretends to commit suicide so the price of his paintings will skyrocket (to be fair, their characters are drunk at the time).

But when van Dyke, in the fog, sees Elke Sommer actually try to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge, he doffs his coat and hurls himself in to rescue her. They end up floating away on a barge while Garner, clutching his chum's coat, believes he actually killed himself--and loses no time putting his scheme into action, making a mint with a bent art dealer (a scene-stealing Roger C. Carmel).

But what will happen when van Dyke bobs back up alive, unaware Garner has instituted his scheme (which will constitute fraud)? And what will Garner do with Dickinson, who shows up out of the blue?

What a great idea for a 1960s-era comedy. And an uber-charming cast.

Unfortunately, charm doesn't carry the day, or the movie. It has a strong story, the first requisite of a good movie; but the writers forgot to put in any laughs. A movie of this period can also get by on being light-hearted, but it's not really that, either.

Then there's the astringent Ethel Merman, another of those Broadway favorites who never had a good foothold in the movies because she does every performance like she's trying to reach the cheap seats. A palpable hit in "it's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," where she dominated a slate of comedians accustomed to stealing scenes, here she's merely loud and unpleasant.

The one performer determined to make this movie work is Elke Sommer at her most winsome. It's always nice to see a beautiful actress who knows how to use her God-given attributes without seeming to. Even with her accent Sommer turns in a fine performance and is utterly likeable and believable.

Garner, half-way between his characters from "The Great Escape" and Maverick," is also solid, as usual. Van Dyke is still in his pratfall phase, but he's good at that. Like Sommer, he knew how to use his body as well as his acting talent.

Angie Dickinson gets sort of lost in the shuffle. She simply can't compete with the others.

Sommer, Garner and van Dyke are all fine and don't coast on their charm. And the movie has a good story and suspense. So what happened?

It's behind the camera where the trouble lies. I mentioned the writing. As a writer myself I can spot its weaknesses. The script should have gone through more drafts and another writer or two should have been brought in to punch up the script, laugh-wise. Garner, van Dyke and Sommer were all adept at comedy (in one of the all-time great 1960s comedies, "A Shot in the Dark," Sommer held her own, up against no less than Peter Sellers). But even the best actors and comics need good material to work with.

Then there's the direction. Norman Jewison was still a novice director. Like Spielberg in "1941" he displays no great flair for comedy early on. Both directors used comedy to good effect elsewhere, but what this movie begged for was a Blake Edwards (who was hitting his stride about this time) or even a Frank Tashlin, stepping up from Jerry Lewis flicks. Jewison, not one of my favorite directors anyway, was not, IMHO, able in his youth to cope with the material, which wasn't that good, anyway.

A heartbreaking, monumental waste of talent; and worse, for Hollywood, of a great idea, which they have a paucity of.

Just to show you, I dozed off at about the two-thirds mark. I don't think I ever snoozed during a Garner movie, and certainly not one with Sommer. It's one of those movies where you really wish they could get a Mulligan, not counting this one but assembling the same cast (maybe dumping Merman and replacing her with Hermione Gingold or Elsa Lanchester) and taking another shot at it.