How Sweet It Is!

"Swinging" comedy has family from the suburbs getting duped by a low-rent travel agent into taking a cut-rate European vacation. James Garner and Debbie Reynolds would seem to be an ideal screen match, but this leaden script never gives their union a chance (and both are saddled with deadening lines like, "Stop fiddling with your necklace and act like a man!"). Garry Marshall and crack comedy writer Jerry Belson adapted the screenplay from Muriel Resnick's book "The Girl in the Turquoise Bikini", and veteran comedy director Jerry Paris helmed the proceedings, but the results are bathetic; comic support from old pros Paul Lynde, Marcel Dalio, Terry-Thomas and Vitto Scotti doesn't help much. These are not the "Happy Days", although there are fun bits by Erin Moran and Penny Marshall. *1/2 from ****

I had many laughs watching this film, however I had a valid reason for that. A great part of the shooting took place on board the cruise-ship s.s. Statendam of the Holland-America Lines. Actually I was a steward on this ship in real life but I also played a very tiny role in this movie. The only thing I had to do was running down the stairs with a life-vest on. It was really a thrill to observe world famous actors like Debby Reynolds and James Garner that close. Shooting took place in 1967 while cruising between Los Angeles and Acapulco(Mexico)I earned US$ 80,- for my (very small)part.I since then followed the career of James Garner, especially the TV-series like the mini-series "Space"(Michener) and Space Cowboys (2000) and the series of Jim Rockford, the P.I.starting in the seventies.

From a time in which movies were much more innocent, 'How Sweet It Is' is one of many comedies from the sixties that had to rely on script, timing, and facial expression instead of today's toilet humor to make audiences laugh. Not the funniest of the lot, but far from the worst.

James Garner and Debbie Reynolds are a married couple accompanying their teenage son as chaperones on a trip to Europe. Aboard the ocean liner, they are constantly trying to rekindle their romance by interludes in various cubbyholes of the ship. It's worth watching just to see the look of disgust on Paul Lynde's face and hear him sneer "Animals!" when he discovers them hiding in a lifeboat. Misunderstandings, jealousy, a rogue Frenchman, and a close encounter with divorce are in store before their European trip is over.

James Garner displays a knack for comedy, which he will later refine in his "Support Your Local Sheriff/Gunfighter" movies.

Good, clean fun if anyone is interested in that sort of thing nowadays. Kind of like a Rock Hudson/Doris Day movie. (Those were great, too!)

This movie has always been a favourite of mine for as long as I can remember. I had not seen it on TV for a while, so I decided to buy the video. It was well worth purchasing this movie because I watch it on a regular basis, like once every 6 to 8 months. Everything from the opening credits with the mannequins & psychedelic background, to the storyline and the variety of characters make this a fun movie to watch. My fave part of this movie is the part when Griff & his son take pictures of the girls trying to smile like the Mona Lisa. This is classic '60s movie making at it's finest! If you like movies from the late '60s like "Yours, Mine & Ours" & "The Impossible Years", then you will really appreciate the humour and storyline of this classic '60s romance/comedy.

The advent of tv in the 1950s and 60s caused a steep decline in movie ticket sales. The Hollywood studios didn't like that, of course, but it convinced them, out of desperation, to make movies that did things Americans couldn't see on tv, and that was often liberating. We got spectacular color, because tv was still b&w. We got exotic locales shot in wide-screen format - the most famous example was Around the World in Eighty Days - because tvs had small screens and focused on live programming from the States.

And we got sex. Lots of sex. Because, of course, there was no talk of sex on tv then.

Keep that in mind when you watch this sex comedy - because that's what it is - played very well by James Garner and a very attractive Debbie Reynolds, who doesn't look like she could have been the mother of a horny adolescent but in fact was. (She still doesn't look her age.)

The plot is very obvious. Garner, a Hemingway-like photographer of big game who is always talking about "being a man", is sent to photograph a high school girls tour of Paris. His wife, Reynolds, gets to go along, as does their son, who is in love with one of the girls. (That story, thankfully, gets almost no screentime. This is not a movie about teenagers for teenagers.) Garner gets hit on repeatedly by the attractive tour guide, but clearly is not interested. Reynolds becomes the object of interest of the very handsome owner of the very luxurious villa in the south of France that she thinks, mistakenly, she has rented for herself and Garner when he finishes his assignment in Paris. Romantic complications ensue.

This isn't much of a travelogue, unlike An American in Paris, or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or Gigi. We see little of either Paris or southern France, not even as reproduced on the back lot of a Hollywood studio. (This was not a major studio production. They probably didn't have the budget for that.) The scene inside the Louvre where Garner shoots the students standing next to - yes, right next to - the Mona Lisa may have been fantasy even then. (I don't recall being able to get that close when I was there three years later in 1971.)

What I liked about this movie - and I liked it a lot - was the comedy between Garner and Reynolds. It's adult comedy. This is a middle-aged couple who are clearly still very much in love, and very active sexually. (Contrast that with Ozzie and Harriet or Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver and you'll understand what made that so different from the tv of that era. Contrast that also with modern Hollywood movies in which, other than Harrison Ford, middle-aged people are no longer shown as having any sex drive, or are made fun of if they do.) Their attempts to have sex are constantly thwarted, however, both on the ship across the Atlantic and once they get to France, so much of the comedy, as in a classic French farce, results from the obstacles that keep them apart from what we are sure would be a great time in bed. And from the misunderstandings when each finds out about the other's pursuer.

I suppose some people might have quibbles with this or that. Paul Lynde plays his usual catty effeminate character, but it is made clear that he is interested in women after all. (It was 1968, after all, and not 1982, when Garner would appear in Victor/Victoria, which dealt with homosexuality in a relatively compassionate way.) Garner and Reynolds' characters are constantly on fire sexually, but never seem tempted by the attractive people who keep hitting on them while they are separated from each other. But even that is presented without moralistic overtones.

One of the best things about this movie is the opening, which I can't describe here without spoiling it for you. Suffice it to say that it is the perfect start to a bedroom farce, with a surprise at the end that I certainly didn't see coming but that showed right off the bat this was a movie we would need to stay sharp to enjoy.

Which I did.