Review of The Girl Can't Help It (1956) by Stuart K — 23 Apr 2012

Directed by former animation director Frank Tashlin (maybe the Brad Bird/Andrew Stanton of his day), he created a good timepiece of the 1950's, when rock music was topping the charts and a whole new generation was on it's way in, and he responded to this new craze with this light, bubbly and amusing comedy, which has a great soundtrack to it's name.

It's got a simple straight-forward plot, which has struggling agent Tom Miller (Tom Ewell), being hired by gangster Marty 'Fats' Murdoch (Edmond O'Brien), whom he knew years earlier, to make a star out of his girlfriend Jerri Jordan (Jayne Mansfield), trouble is, she can't sing and she's more interested in being a housewife, but Murdoch and Miller won't give in, and even Murdoch has written a song that Jerri could put her one big talent to.

Director Tashlin used to do cartoons for Warner Bros. and there's parts of this that feel like a live-action cartoon, but it's good witty dialogue and it's well shot, but the main highlights are the musical performances from acts of the day like Little Richard, Eddie Fontaine, Julie London, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps and Fats Domino, that punctuate the film and look beautiful in Cinemascope and Deluxe.

A product of it's time, proud of it, and it'll never date.