You can definitely feel the writing hand of Neil Simon in After the Fox. It has his brand of witty comedy and also a bit of silly slapstick for added laughs. While the comedy wasn't always effective in this film, when it worked I was laughing a lot. Peter Sellers is a big reason why the comedy was clicking, because he has a ton of talent and can make even boring scenes funny with the right look or some inflection in his line-reading. In many ways this reminded me of a Blake Edwards film because of the style of jokes and probably because Sellers was delivering them. Unfortunately, I think the movie would have been better served with a director more adept at comedy like Edwards. It's not that Vittorio De Sica is completely inexperienced with the genre, or that he filmed any of this movie poorly, but there was something that felt missing in the way the film was presented. It seemed the script called for things to get pushed to an even wackier and outlandish place, but it never went there, and they played certain scenes straight that needed a madcap feeling.
That being said, I still found many of the elements in After the Fox to be delightful. This isn't the first time I've seen a movie where the plot revolves around a fake movie being made in order to cover for something else that is going on, but I liked the way that plot was presented this time. The kind of rambling and nonsensical scenes that we see the protagonist invent on the spot feel like things I've seen in real movies. I laughed out loud more than once thinking of real-life directors that I imagine work with this exact kind of insane format that lacks any structure or logic. (Some of them are definitely Italian, too, so that made the setting of this film a bit more humorous.) One of the elements I didn't love in After the Fox was the family relationship stuff. It felt like a shoddy attempt to create motivation for our main character, and didn't amount to much in the storyline. There were certainly some jokes that sprung out of the family drama, but it never struck me as vital to the plot. There are no other specifics that I can point to as flaws in After the Fox, but I still felt it was not quite as good as it could have been. I'm certainly thinking about watching it again, and I hope it will click more next time, but for now I'd only call it good and not great.
That being said, I still found many of the elements in After the Fox to be delightful. This isn't the first time I've seen a movie where the plot revolves around a fake movie being made in order to cover for something else that is going on, but I liked the way that plot was presented this time. The kind of rambling and nonsensical scenes that we see the protagonist invent on the spot feel like things I've seen in real movies. I laughed out loud more than once thinking of real-life directors that I imagine work with this exact kind of insane format that lacks any structure or logic. (Some of them are definitely Italian, too, so that made the setting of this film a bit more humorous.) One of the elements I didn't love in After the Fox was the family relationship stuff. It felt like a shoddy attempt to create motivation for our main character, and didn't amount to much in the storyline. There were certainly some jokes that sprung out of the family drama, but it never struck me as vital to the plot. There are no other specifics that I can point to as flaws in After the Fox, but I still felt it was not quite as good as it could have been. I'm certainly thinking about watching it again, and I hope it will click more next time, but for now I'd only call it good and not great.