Lana Turner plays Adriana, a stage actress who retires to marry wealthy widower financier Charles (Dan O'Herlihy). Charles has an adult daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg) who resents this and takes up with the hippie types. One of those, med student Johnny (George Chakiris), finds out that Lisa is rich, and takes Lisa for his girlfriend.
Then Daddy dies, leaving Adriana as executor of the will. There's a clause about her having control over disbursement of the estate and her approval of any husband for Lisa (at least before she turns 25), and when Adriana doesn't approve of Lisa and Johnny getting married, Johnny comes up with a devious plan to drive Adriana crazy by spiking her sleeping pills with LSD! The basic plot, that of a parent not approving of a child's marriage, and the two young lovers deciding to do something about it, isn't a bad one. With the right script, as in Pretty Poison, it can be quite good.
Unfortunately, The Big Cube doesn't have the right script. And it certainly doesn't have the right acting. Mossberg is wooden; O'Herlihy is wasted in a bit part; Adriana's playwright Lansdale (Richard Egan) plays the guy who just knows he knows more than all of the doctors; and then there's Lana, who has to play bad acid trip scenes. Oh my.
There are also the other hippies, and the Travilla-designed gowns Lana has to wear. Parts of the movie wind up in "so bad it's good" territory, but too much of it winds up in the realm of just being tedious.
