This movie is anathema among most Don Knotts fans and for good reason. It marks a deliberate departure from his previous family oriented comedies and dives uncomfortably deep into the smutty realm 'adult' material. However, maybe by doing so, it becomes, if not the best, perhaps the most memorable of all Knotts' films. Maybe it's even the funniest.
Firstly, the central concept is downright ridiculous. We've seen Knotts as an astronaut, Knotts the dentist gunslinger, even Knotts the talking fish, but none of these are even a quarter absurd as Knotts the reluctant Hugh Hefner-esque 'love god'. It's so patently ridiculous it cannot help but be funny on a basic level.
Secondly, what are all those satiric barbs doing in here? Knotts' previous comedies were utterly harmless, relying mostly on the star's inherent comic ability for laughs. This film, however, has a bit more on its mind, throwing daggers smack into the brain of a 60s counterculture quite deserving of them. The story---concerning a bird photographer being forced to publish a dirty magazine to 'protect freedom of speech'---takes aim at hippies (depicted as protesting, bearded clowns carrying signs saying 'Modern Mothers for Obscenity' among other things); the media (crooks willing to cater to humanity's lowest impulses for money); the judicial system (I don't have space or time to detail all the absurdities of the court scene); smut peddlers (In love with their own trash, acting as if they're creating some kind of transcendent art); advertising, swingers, gangsters, you name it. The director of this work, Nat Hiken, apparently worked with Mel Brooks for some time and there is definitely a touch of early Brooks in the farcical plot, slimy characters, and some very, very funny musical scenes.
Finally, this film simply has a unique perspective. Throughout most of American film history satire has remained squarely on the side of hippies and their ilk (Robert Altman et al.) It's interesting to witness this subversive perspective on subversives especially since there isn't really anything else like it (except for maybe Kubrick's film mentioned in the title...) Squares aren't supposed to be making satires. This aspect is, interestingly enough, why the film was ultimately a financial failure and remains mostly forgotten or ignored by modern audiences: Knotts' normal conservative fanbase was horrified by the near-constant sexual dialogue while others, (movie critics who are basically everything this movie makes fun of) likely felt personally attacked by it.
