Naughty Marietta (1910), music by Victor Herbert Reception Critical response Bananas was well received by critics; receiving an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 35 reviews with an average rating of 7.5/10. Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the film, saying "Allen's view of the world is fraught with everything except pathos, and it's a view I happen to find very funny. Here is no little man surviving with a wan smile and a shrug, but a runty, wise-mouthed guy whose initial impulses toward cowardice seem really heroic in the crazy order of the way things are." He concluded, "Any movie that attempts to mix together love, Cuban revolution, the C.I.A., Jewish mothers, J. Edgar Hoover and a few other odds and ends (including a sequence in which someone orders 1,000 grilled cheese sandwiches) is bound to be a little weird—and most welcome." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and called the opening scene "one of the funniest bits of film," though he thought the romance "gets in the way" and "could have been omitted easily." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Allen seems to have been unable to figure a suitable finish for the plot, which does not so much peak as stop. Still the best jokes have a glorious insanity about them. Given the diminishing ability to laugh like blazing idiots these days, 'Bananas' is welcome even if Allen is not quite at the top of his form." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film was "in a word, hilarious," and "an immense improvement" over Take the Money and Run. Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin thought that "the gags seem a little brighter than in Take the Money," but also found the scattershot humor "too undisciplined and disparate." John Simon wrote of the film's plot "None of it makes for sense or solidly developing humor, and much of it is in bad taste". Accolades The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #69 References External links 1971 films 1970s screwball comedy films 1970s political comedy films American political comedy films American political satire films American screwball comedy films American LGBT-related films 1970s English-language films Films scored by Marvin Hamlisch Films directed by Woody Allen Films set in South America Films