I'll Take Sweden

"Bob Holcomb" (Bob Hope) is an oil company executive who comes home and finds out that his teenage daughter "JoJo" (Tuesday Weld) is throwing a party with all of her friends and essentially wrecking the house in the process. If that wasn't bad enough she tells him that she has fallen in love and introduces him to a young man by the name of "Kenny Klinger" (Frankie Avalon) who she wants to marry. Bob realizes at once that Kenny is a bit too wild and immature for his daughter so in order to create some distance between the two of them he decides to accept an assignment to Sweden and take her with him. But things don't work out exactly as he plans because once there she finds a Swedish boyfriend named "Erik Carlson" (Jeremy Slate) who is much more sexually sophisticated and aggressive than Kenny ever was. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film shares a similarity to the "beach movies" produced in the early 60's which typically evolved around young men and women dancing to rock-and-roll music and getting romantically acquainted while having to overcome a host of weird obstacles along the way. This film is no exception and carries with it the same light humor and dated quality. True to form, Bob Hope throws some good one-liners here and there which certainly helps a comedy of this type. Likewise, the presence of an attractive actress like Tuesday Weld doesn't hurt this film in anyway either. Even so, neither of them could offset the uneven production quality or the rather predictable plot and because of that I have rated this movie accordingly. Average.

Wise-cracking widower Bob Hope (as Robert "Bob" Holcomb) arrives home to discover his pretty blonde daughter Tuesday Weld (as JoJo Holcomb) is engaged to pseudo-rock 'n' roll singer Frankie Avalon (as Kenny Klinger). Mr. Avalon has dropped put of college, rides a motorcycle, lives in a small trailer, and takes Ms. Weld out to strip clubs. Hope is horrified. In order to get Weld away from Avalon, he accepts a job transfer to Stockholm. There, Hope discovers a Swedish custom regarding pre-marital sex...

We are told, in order to determine how well they are "suited for each other," Swedes have sex before getting married. This insures a low divorce rate. Hope romances attractive Dina Merrill (as Karin Granstedt Martoni) and Weld prepares to lose her virginity during a two week vacation with playboy Jeremy Slate (as Erik Carlson). Hope declares, "Nobody's gonna chalk up any mileage on JoJo without getting a driver's license first!" To make Weld change her mind, Hope contacts Avalon in America...

Avalon returns to the storyline and gives the film a final burst of energy. The highlight is his performance of "I'll Take Sweden, Ya Ya Ya!" In brief blue swim trunks, Avalon gyrates around a boatyard, attracting Rosemarie Frankland in a white bikini. The beauty queen with obvious assets moved from Hope (one of the comedian's many alleged companions) to Grass Roots singer Warren Entner. Avalon was no longer selling rock 'n' roll records, but he is funnier and more appealing than all others, herein.

****** I'll Take Sweden (6/2/65) Frederick de Cordova ~ Bob Hope, Frankie Avalon, Tuesday Weld, Dina Merrill

This film is in the style of Doris Day films that feature compromising sexual situations and innuendo while on the surface everything remains innocent fun. That may have been titillating in 1965 when you couldn't say the word "pregnant" on TV and Rob and Laura Petrie had separate beds, but now it's just boring and adolescent. I get tired of this innuendo quickly, but it's always fun explaining each joke to my wife, because the entire thing goes way over her head.

This film features blatant sexual material centering around the question of Bob Hope's daughter: will she or won't she?

The film presents Sweden as a sexually free place, while America stands for a higher morality. On the surface the movie preaches this higher morality while actually presenting and capitalizing on the intriguing images and ideas of a free-lovin' society.

One problem with this type of film is that the writers think that the innuendo will carry the film. They think that just the fact that they are covertly, or in this case, overtly, talking about sex will keep us nervously giggling and entertained, gasping in shock or winking at each other. It's like a comedian whose act relies on dirty language. Ok, they may get nervous laughs, but after some time it gets boring or even distasteful. In this film, because the writers are overconfident, they don't bother with good characters, a good plot, clever dialog, motivations, or any thing else that makes for good drama or comedy, they just let the subject of sex carry it. That just doesn't cut it, especially not in modern times when any shock value it might have had is completely gone.

In rattling off one lame joke after another, persevering like a stevedore in the face of his time slipping away, cocky crooked grin intact, Hope approaches depths of surrealism that should've impressed Bunuel. When he tells Dina Merrill that he's never met an interior decorator with her exterior, and she reacts with a dewy smile, it's like cutting the eyeball in Un Chien Andalou. Meanwhile Frankie Avalon struts around like he's the Tom Cruise of his generation. Check out Frankie's astonishing, hip-gyrating 'I'll Take Sweden Ya Ya Ya' number and you'll swear someone slipped mescaline into your coffee. This is one of the all time great camp classics, awaiting its proper appreciation.

After weeks ago taping this and the one that preceded it-Kings Go Forth-on DVR off the THIS movie channel, I finally decided to watch Bob Hope's I'll Take Sweden. Unfortunately, while the previous picture's enjoyment was marred a little bit by having the scenes freeze and then fade out constantly while the audio was still running during the ending scenes, so it was with this one during the beginning ones. Still, once that was fixed, I did find this one quite amusing if not completely hilarious despite, or maybe because of, the silly contrivances that permeated the whole screenplay written by Nat Perrin, Robert Fisher, and Arthur Marx, the latter of which happens to be the son of the one and only Groucho. I mean, Mr. Hope still has a way with a punchline and Frankie Avalon provides some energy with his slacker role with enjoyable, if a little forgettable, music interludes. Dina Merril is appealing enough as Bob's paramour and Tuesday Weld provides her own charms as his stunning daughter. Then there's Jeremy Slate as the Swedish rival with Avalon for Ms. Weld's attentions. While he and Ms. Merril are close to overdoing the Scandinavian accent, his is almost close to irritating. Good thing it all turns out the way it does. But all in all, with competent direction from Frederick De Cordova, I rather enjoyed I'll Take Sweden.