What's So Bad About Feeling Good?

Film: What's So Bad About Feeling Good? (1968)

Stars: George Peppard, Mary Tyler Moore, Dom DeLuise, John McMartin, Thelma Ritter

Director: George Seaton

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Mary Tyler Moore: click here to learn more about Ms. Moore (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Mary Tyler Moore, as we pointed out when we kicked off this month, is very much a TV star first and a film star second.  Though other actresses we've talked about this year (such as Doris Day and Annette Funicello) had success in TV, Moore is the only actress we're going to discuss that the public almost exclusively associates with television.  That's because small screen success came pretty early.  She made her cinematic debut in Operation Mad Ball as a non-speaking nurse opposite Jack Lemmon, but it wasn't until 1961 that the public seemed to care who she was when she got the lead in The Dick van Dyke Show as the titular van Dyke's onscreen wife Laura Petrie.  Moore was a sensation, as was the show.  A now beloved series (if you've never seen it, you're in for a treat), it was a Top 10 hit for three seasons, and won 15 Emmys, including one for Moore as Best Actress.  The show went out on-top (van Dyke was begged by CBS to continue, but he wanted to end with the audience wanting more...something modern actors should have the class to consider), and Moore briefly turned to movies under a contract with Universal Pictures.  One of the first films she made was What's So Bad About Feeling Good?, our film today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a pandemic sweeping across New York, where a toucan has come into the harbor and infects people with a disease that makes them unabashedly happy and euphoric.  It initially lands in the loft of a group of beatniks, including Pete (Peppard) and Liz (Moore).  Pete is infected, and suddenly he goes from being a glum, downtrodden pessimist to a joyous optimist.  The rest of their commune follow the same pattern, except for Liz, who is immune to the bird...but with so much positivity around her, she feels happy and in love with the new Pete.  The government (including John McMartin as a besotted Mayor and Dom DeLuise as a bumbling scientist) eventually stops the plague, given the worry that it'll hurt productivity and capitalism (one person in the Mayor's office suggests tearing down Wall Street to build a park, to the Mayor's horror).  Pete goes back to normal, but Liz can't-this change was real for her, and she leaves...but not before Pete decides to change too, and they rush and steal the toucan from the zoo, potentially to bring back the infection somewhere else and go live in bliss.

If you're reading that description and thinking "this feels prescient," you're not alone.  An episode of This American Life in 2020 talked about the film's bizarre similarities to the Covid-19 crisis, including how mask-wearing was encouraged in this film.  Of course, this is a lighthearted, silly comedy (and the disease isn't fatal).  It's also not a particularly good movie, unfortunately.  The film needs considerably more humor.  My thought has always been about comedy that, more than any other genre, it dates horribly, particularly when it's doing cultural commentary, which this does (the paranoia of the 1960's, the grooviness & pointlessness of hippie culture).  Dom DeLuise, in particular, feels like he's missing a pretty big opportunity by coming into the film late and not getting much in terms of visual comedy except at one point wearing a space helmet to protect himself from the virus.

Moore also isn't great here.  One of the things I'm curious about with Moore is that, for an actress who was very, very famous on television (and also quite gifted), her film career really only boils down to one movie (Ordinary People) in terms of critics' & audiences' memories.  I thought there might be a hidden gem here, but I was wrong.  The chemistry between she and Peppard is too strained, with Peppard's bland handsomeness not a good pairing with her cheerful spunk.  The ending should be more fulfilling, but we've had too little growth, especially from Peppard, to really land the plane on that front, and so you just are like "that was cute" rather than getting all of the feels.  A missed opportunity, but almost worth watching just from the curiosity perspective (in relation to the Covid pandemic).