What's Up, Tiger Lily?

PG

Released Nov 2, 1966

1 hr. 20 min.

Comedy

List

81%

26 Reviews

Tomatometer

52%

5,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

A low-rent Japanese spy flick gets a kitschy rewrite from Woody Allen. With hilarious new dubbed dialogue, the revamped movie follows the efforts of secret agent Phil Moskowitz (Tatsuya Mihashi) to uncover the world's best egg salad recipe. Aiding him in his important culinary mission are gorgeous Suki Yaki (Akiko Wakabayashi) and her sister Teri Yaki (Mie Hama). But Moskowitz will have to watch out -- crime boss Wing Fat (Susumu Kurobe) is also on the mayonnaise-and-dill drenched trail.

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ed m

Great idea, but it doesn't work.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

04/20/23

Full Review

DanTheMan 2

What's Up, Tiger Lily? is one of those movies that while novel at the time has aged so poorly there's very little value in even looking at it nowadays. Woody Allen's "directorial debut", which is a stretch considering all he did was direct the dubbing and shoot a couple of new scenes of himself, the rest of this film is just re-edited clips from A Keg of Powder and Key of Keys dubbed over for "comedic" effect. It's akin to a fan dub but the jokes are in poor taste or just outright unfunny, a string of sight gags, puns, general farce and jokes based on Asian stereotypes. The problem is this is what the film sets out to do… so is bad that I mark it down for doing exactly what it set out to do? Honestly, I don't really care, it's unremarkable and just furthers the general stereotyping of Asian movies in general, giving them a bad name everywhere because of "movies" like this.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

04/12/23

Full Review

Audience Member

First 1/2 is 5 stars, 2nd maybe 3. Blobbo give average.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/17/23

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william d

Not all the jokes land, but the ones that do are pretty funny.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

robert r

And the award for strangest directorial debut goes to. . . "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" makes for an undoubtedly fascinating watch at times. "Fascinating" in that it's fascinating something like this ever came to be in the first place. A pre-existing, Japanese spy film that's been re-dubbed and worked over by Woody Allen's overtly crass and occasionally racist hands? Yikes. Some of the more innocuous jokes may land every ten minutes or so, but, God almighty, is this thing an incredibly obnoxious watch on the whole. I get that this kind of filmmaking may have been viewed as some kind of groundbreaking novelty for the times, but anyone with any sort of "MST3K-esque" commentary experience would be able to concoct a funnier viewing of the parodied film at home; and do it amongst the company of friends/family, to boot. Definitely one of the writer/director's lamer efforts, for sure.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

If you've watched Woody Allen before, you would know that this has no much rooms for him to display. The kind-of-funny dialogues with not matched frames; the weak fight which I'd rather watch gunplay in Westerns or Chinese kungfu; the unchangeable stories which not make good use of their purpose "egg salad". The movie got creative concept but that's not enough for a 80-minute movie. The best part might be "Death is my bread and danger is my butter" said by Allen, and the pretty button-shape hide webcams.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

Full Review

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Woody Allen

Director

Woody Allen

Himself

Tatsuya Mihashi

Phil Moscowitz

Mie Hama

Teri Yaki

Akiko Wakabayashi

Suki Yaki

Tadao Nakamura

Shepherd Wong

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Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

Arguably Woody Allen's funniest movie.

May 10, 2013

Full Review

Variety Staff

Variety

The production has one premise -- deliberately mismatched dialog -- which is sustained reasonably well through its brief running time.

Jul 6, 2010

Full Review

Time Out

A jolly oddity.

Feb 11, 2006

Full Review

Diego Galán

El Pais (Spain)

A terrible Japanese film. [Full Review in Spanish]

Aug 20, 2019

Full Review

Wendy Michener

Maclean's Magazine

What's Up Tiger Lily? Woody Allen, that's what. His wild sub-version of a routine Japanese spy picture is the surprise hip hit of the year.

Jun 27, 2019

Full Review

Fernando F. Croce

CinePassion

Since dismissed as juvenile doodling by its author, the picture is actually an exercise in disjunctive radicalism, the word defeating the image.

May 10, 2013

Full Review

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Synopsis

A low-rent Japanese spy flick gets a kitschy rewrite from Woody Allen. With hilarious new dubbed dialogue, the revamped movie follows the efforts of secret agent Phil Moskowitz (Tatsuya Mihashi) to uncover the world's best egg salad recipe. Aiding him in his important culinary mission are gorgeous Suki Yaki (Akiko Wakabayashi) and her sister Teri Yaki (Mie Hama). But Moskowitz will have to watch out -- crime boss Wing Fat (Susumu Kurobe) is also on the mayonnaise-and-dill drenched trail.

Director: Woody Allen
Rating: PG
Genre: Comedy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Nov 2, 1966, Original
Release Date (DVD): Jun 16, 2009