When this film first came out, our family was about to go on an American Express tour (11 countries in about as many days) and all my parents' friends said "you have to go see this!" We did. We smiled...but it was very clear that there was a dividing line in the audience. A healthy half of the audience was roaring with laughter the other half wasn't. Clearly, "you had to be there." We went on our tour. Marvelous time - lots of places we wanted to go back to, and in the years since have - and we went back to see the film again. This time we were in the half roaring.Seeing the film again all these years later now that it's out on DVD, the memories came flooding back and made the film just as lovely an experience. To the "uninitiated" there's much in this now probably somewhat dated film (the falling of EEC borders and the rise of the Euro have smoothed travel considerably) that may seem crude or unkind, but to those who have enjoyed similar experiences, the warmth and affection that the film makers clearly had for the experience glows through. For all the problems that make up the comedy of the film, these characters had a wonderful time - and so will you if you've traveled.It is, as others have noted, a holiday for great character actors. The great Reva Rose (the quiet wife Irma who gets hilariously separated from her husband) was just off famously creating the role of Lucy Van Pelt in the Off-Broadway musical YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN. She's made dozens of film and TV appearances since, but anyone who saw either YAGM,CB or this will never forget her. The rest of the cast is just as good.Well worth a look.

Though the nominal stars of If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium are Suzanne Pleshette and Ian McShane have a nice romantic fling in the film, the real entertainment value lies in the varied group of American tourists roaming the continent. If these are typical no wonder our image is so bad.Ian McShane plays the guide for our two week tour and Pleshette is traveling to Europe alone to get away for a bit and ponder the marriage proposal from good old reliable Frank Latimore. It takes a while, but she falls for tour guide McShane. He's however not a person to settle down, it's why he has the job he does.But the rest of the members of her tour are a grand collection of character players. Norman Fell loses wife Reva Rose to another tour of Japanese touring the continent where she makes the biggest contribution to American-Japanese friendship since MacArthur. Michael Constantine is interested in reliving the best time of his life which he spent in Europe during World War II. Marty Ingels with camera in hand is looking to get pictures of beautiful women from each country to show how he's scoring to his buddies. Best of all is Murray Hamilton and Pamela Britton. She wants to go to Europe for herself and to get daughter Hilarie Thompson's mind off boys, this was the Sixties you know. Hamilton goes kicking and screaming. And Hilarie finds American student Luke Halpin abroad and he's better than what she left in the states.Hamilton is great as the ultimate American Philistine. I could see coming out of his mouth a comment that William Frawley made on an I Love Lucy episode when the Ricardos and Mertzes are in Rome. Frawley was singularly unimpressed with the Colosseum, saying that Joe DiMaggio would hit 80 home runs a year in that band box of a ballpark. Stuff like that comes out of Hamilton regularly.In fact he has a very funny encounter with an Italian shoemaker in Rome, played by Vittorio DeSica. Language problems and all each eventually gets his message across.I hope in real life we don't get as many laughs as this crowd does. Less laughs would do wonders for our image.

This movie is even more enjoyable for people who have been on a very similar trip, as I did in 1966, with Overland; however, it took five days from Belgium to Rome. I am a believer in happy endings, but Charlie ended up being treated the same way as he treated countless girls. I felt for him, because I also fell for a girl on the bus, but having previously also treated girls the same way, I paid the price, like Charlie. The characters in the movie reminded me of the characters on my bus. There is a very impressive list of character actors and guest stars which proves that the salaries then were far more reasonable than they are today. They don't make comedies like this anymore, unfortunately.

British wag leads group of polyester Americans on a crash coach tour of Europe. Yet another of the drive-in classics of my youth. And as I've taken a few of these tours, the movie will always have a place in me heart. But for a ton of reasons, I daresay this flicker won't really appeal to many people these days. Its beyond dated and completely idiotic in many respects, the voice-over jokes/complaints of the passengers that play while the bus is shown plodding through Europe, are so lame you cringe, but... there's a certain charm in the quaintness of what American life was once like. The young girl who gets dragged on the trip by her parents so they can keep her away from her boyfriend, is supposed to represent rebellious youth, yet she's an 18 year old virgin. The film contains so many 'side trips' that a few were bound to be amusing, and they are. The adventure of the guy visiting his relatives in Venice is pretty damn funny. Bottom line is if you don't know about this film already, there's a reason and you're probably best served by keeping it that way. But if you never got to see Europe before its culture got power stripped by a combination of American wannabeism and irresponsible immigration policies, well then you might enjoy it.