Never a Dull Moment

1968
G
1h 39m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Actor Jack Albany, who plays gangsters on TV, is mistaken for notorious hit-man Ace, and is hired by mob boss Leo Smooth to pull a heist, but Jack must find a way out of it.Actor Jack Albany, who plays gangsters on TV, is mistaken for notorious hit-man Ace, and is hired by mob boss Leo Smooth to pull a heist, but Jack must find a way out of it.Actor Jack Albany, who plays gangsters on TV, is mistaken for notorious hit-man Ace, and is hired by mob boss Leo Smooth to pull a heist, but Jack must find a way out of it.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.1/10

821

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
This was the last film in which Edward G. Robinson portrayed a gangster.

Goofs
When Smooth is showing the gang slides of the painting and museum layout, he is standing in front of the screen and uses a cane for a pointer - but no shadows are cast on the screen, nor are any of the images projected on himself or the cane. This reveals the images are being rear-projected on the screen and are not coming from the slide projector on the table in the same room. Any shadows seen on the screen are being made from a studio light coming from a different direction.

Quotes
Jack Albany: Why'd they call a tough kid like you a sissy name like Florian?
Florian: It's a tough name!

Alternate versions
Original VHS by Disney is 90 minutes, whereas the film's initial release and dvd release run 99 minutes.

Connections
Referenced in Getting Wasted (1980)

User reviews16

Review

Featured review

Even if you can go back again, should you?

After several years of phenomenal TV success counterbalanced with a movie career that ranged from good ("Bye Bye Birdie" "Mary Poppins") to so-so ("Fitzwilly") to Gawd-awful ("Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N."), Dick Van Dyke went back to Disney for the third time on four years for "Never a Dull Moment," with results that could best be described as mixed.

Now, whenever Hollywood decides to use this all-purpose title, as it had at least four times before, beware, as the film is generally duller that usual. "Never a Dull Moment," lives up to its title, thanks primarily to Van Dyke and a solid supporting cast. Edward G. Robinson, Dorothy Provine (just before her simultaneous retirement and marriage), Henry Silva, Tony Bill, Jack Elam, and Slim Pickens all do as well in their roles as the script permits.

And there's the rub. A.J. Crothers, although the Disney people used him several times, was never one of the more inspired writers of comedy, and his films with Disney suffer for it. The cast and director Jerry Paris, a Van Dyke Show veteran on both sides of the camera, give it their best, but a limp script keeps undoing all their efforts.

In short, you, and Van Dyke, could worse than "Never a Dull Moment," but you could do a whole lot better, too.