Here’s a lesson: it pays off to be a bit sceptical from time to time, because if you blindly trust a film based on what it appears to be, you’re occasionally going to find that you’ve been deceived the whole time, and not always in a particularly clever way. Based on the title and the premise, you’d be forgiven for thinking The World of Henry Orient was another wonderful vehicle for Peter Sellers, as part of his encroaching influence on cinema in the mid-1960s. I can’t recall the last time there was a film that was so blatantly built on the name of its star, only to have his role be beyond disposable, a side-character that serves less as an individual and more as a plot device. George Roy Hill, who did indeed make some terrific films throughout his career, doesn’t do particularly well in adapting Nora Johnson’s novel, which was somewhat an autobiographical account of her own obsession with an older celebrity. In all honesty, as much as there was sincere promise underpinning nearly every frame, The World of Henry Orient squanders absolutely all potential by being an aimless jumble of misbegotten ideas, feverishly sewn together until it resembles a groovy, charming coming-of-age comedy that is neither nearly as hip nor endearing as it genuinely believes itself to be. By no means a travesty – and it is certainly a very watchable film in the same way that many quaint 1960s comedies tend to be, The World of Henry Orient is just about as interesting as it is insightful – which pales in comparison to what it could’ve been. It’s not even memorable enough to be considered a bad film, occupying a space between merely passable and unambiguously mediocre, which is pretty much exactly what we’d come to expect from a film as singularly uninterested in doing anything more than the bare minimum.

It isn’t often that I agree with W.C. Fields, especially with his adage to “never work with children or animals”, mostly because there are some examples of both giving delightful performances. However, The World of Henry Orient is one of the few times that this applies perfectly. Someone, at some point, decided that a story of two young private-school girls terrorizing a much older celebrity with whom they’re both obsessed, and later madly in love, by stalking him (normally while dressed in Chinese garb) was a good idea. Someone also genuinely believed casting two newcomers without any discernible skill other than fitting the age-bracket, was also a feasible way to make this film. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the performances given by Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth, but there’s also not much right about them either. They leave a lot to be desired, which is really only the fault of those who decided that conceiving of meagre, uninteresting characters that seem to behave as if the person writing them had never been around a child, or really any human being, ever before. Walker and Spaeth are perfectly adequate, but something that becomes increasingly clear throughout The World of Henry Orient is that adequacy is equated with quality, with every moment of this film being the product of someone believing that what they were doing was good enough, rather than willing to put in the work that even the most novice of filmmakers tend to rely on. The two young actresses are passable, but when you have a story that hinges on them, in both their various (mis)adventures around New York City, and the lessons they learn as they pass through adolescence, it seems like a waste to spend so much time having them do nothing other than playing thinly-veiled versions of what someone believed a teenager is.

However, this film also proves to be a testament to the effortless talents of Peter Sellers, because despite being entirely wasted in this film, courted to play a role clearly designed for someone with less than a fraction of his talent, he still turns in a relatively great performance, which is exactly where the biggest shortcoming of this film lies – Sellers is doing some incredible work, in spite of the fact that the film doesn’t really care to give him much to do, but no one seemed to notice. Throwing Sellers into a meaningless supporting role like this is ill-advised, as Blake Edwards learned the moment he saw him steal every scene he was in during the making of The Pink Panther, which was almost immediately repurposed to focus on Inspector Clouseau. There are a few actors who you simply don’t waste, and Sellers was one of them. Whatever the reason for his casting here, it seems to have been entirely misguided, particularly when we consider the quality of the performance he’s giving in comparison to what the film expects from him. It’s almost harrowing to see how the actor desperately grasps for something to work with throughout the film, adopting one of his signature indeterminate accents and playing the part of Henry Orient through a series of tics and traits that he genuinely seems to believe will give him something to do, since the film is so uninterested in developing further than just a plot device, an unconventional object of desire. It’s probably a bad sign when you cast one of his generation’s most enduring, versatile actors in a role that was mostly inspired by the wonderfully likeable but uncompromisingly straightforward Tony Bennett. Regardless, Sellers is the saving grace of the film and lends it some merit, even if only through doing his best with an outrageously poor role.

Perhaps the biggest problem with The World of Henry Orient is that it just doesn’t know what it wants to be – it is partially an upbeat coming-of-age tale, as well as a satire on the cult of celebrity, and something of a romantic comedy to boot. However, Hill seems incapable of handling all these thematic strings, which really shouldn’t be all that difficult, considering that not only do these themes often work well together, but the director managed them in other works without much difficulty. Ultimately, the coming-of-age subplot was weak, the satire blunt and the romance frigid, leaving only an uncomfortable bundle of scenes that feel like they should be making us laugh, but are just about as unfunny as a film like this can guess. The film also feels incredibly uneven in terms of editing, almost as if, at some point between the writing and editing stage, someone had burst in with a chainsaw and hacked away at half of the film, causing an imbalance in both tone and plot. There’s just nothing special about this film, which would’ve been fine had it not been so offensively bland in what it was trying to say. Looking at this film as the product of its time, you can compare it to the many forgettable 1960s comedies that either are lacking in plot or poor in execution. The World of Henry Orient has the rare quality of failing in both and adding in a sense of hackneyed humour as well, creating a disconcerting trilogy of failure that governs most of this film. There should be something there, but every moment when we think the film is making some comment on something relevant, it takes a detour into even more insufferable, unrealistic anti-comedic treachery.

What’s even worse is that The World of Henry Orient seems like one of those films that has something to say – and for a while, it seemed like this was going to be it’s only real merit, with the audience waiting on bated breath for the various fragmented segments to come together in a memorable way. It never does, and we’re left with an overly-sentimental, bland and utterly forgettable excuse for a film, being consistently uneven in both the story it intends to tell – mostly a result of it not knowing what it wants to be exactly – and the execution of some promising ideas, which are shown to be almost worthless when they’re funnelled through an uninspired, bland work of fiction that doesn’t only not take off in any sincere way, but seems entirely against putting in the effort to be anything other than a passable attempt at a quirky comedy that blends celebrity satire with upbeat coming-of-age comedy, not being particularly successful in either situation. Ultimately, The World of Henry Orient is an enormous disappointment – it had so much potential, and save for a decent performance given by Sellers (who seems to belong in an entirely different movie, and who I genuinely believe this film should’ve given far more attention to, instead of the mediocre leads), there’s just nothing memorable about this film at all. It’s not a bad film – at least that would make it worth discussing. Rather, The World of Henry Orient is just hopelessly mediocre, with its main flaws being that it’s just far too dull and uninteresting to even merit something close to an insightful discussion. There are many essential comedies from this period – I can confidently state that The World of Henry Orient is absolutely not one of them.