tek's rating:

That Darn Cat! (G)
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This came out in 1965, but I didn't see it until 2021. There was a remake in 1997 that I'm sure I saw at some point, but by the time I watched this I didn't remember much of anything about it. Anyway, I suppose I could have put my review under either "classics" or "family" or maybe even "mystery", but I feel like "comedy" is the best fit. I've gotta say, the whole film is rather silly, maybe even redonkulous. But I found it pretty amusing, and I'm not sure how much that has to do with the beer I was drinking when I watched it.

Hayley Mills plays a girl named Patti Randall, who lives with her older sister Ingrid, as well as a cat called D.C. (Darn Cat). D.C. goes out looking for food or whatever, pretty much every evening at 9. One night he happens to follow a man who'd just bought some fish and steaks at a deli. The man, Iggy (Frank Gorshin of Batman fame), is one of a pair of bank robbers who had taken a teller named Margaret Miller hostage. (Incidentally, at one point Iggy's partner, Dan, threatens Margaret with a line that I was sure I'd heard somewhere else recently. And I think it must have been in From Dusk Till Dawn.) Anyway, Margaret secretly replaces D.C.'s collar with her wristwatch, on which she'd started to scratch the word "help". When D.C. goes home, Patti finds the watch and instantly jumps to the conclusion that the kidnapped bank teller had sent it, which is rather a stretch, but whatever. She goes to the FBI, and gets an agent named Zeke Kelso (Dean Jones) involved in the case. He heads up a team of agents who tail D.C. over the next couple of nights, hoping he'll lead them to the bank robbers. All this is complicated by Patti's sort of boyfriend, Canoe; and Ingrid's sort of boyfriend but mostly carpool driver, Gregory; and a busybody neighbor named Mrs. MacDougall, whose husband doesn't like her being so nosy. Oh, and at one point Patti gets some help from a nervous jeweller named Mr. Hofsteddder (Ed Wynn, who's as funny as ever in his brief scene).

That's pretty much all I want to tell you. It was fun to watch it once, but I doubt I'd ever want to watch it again.


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