Phffft

One summer night as a high-school-age teen with nothing to do, I watched this movie on TV. I had never seen Judy Holliday before and I suppose part of my enjoyment of the film was discovering how good she was. I already knew Jack Lemmon was good. I thought the film was funny and delightful from start to finish.

At any rate, a lot of years later, I watched Phffft again, and was very disappointed. I really want to see it a third time, now, because I wonder if I was just in a bad mood, or something. I don't understand how my reaction could be so different. I found it dull and slow-moving, and most surprisingly, not very funny. It also looked kind of cheaply made, and it probably was (cheapness being sort of a hallmark of Columbia Pictures, unless it was a big, important film - and even then, sometimes).

I can usually get into an older film and appreciate the humor based on what was humorous then, but I found a lot of the wit too dated to enjoy, and even at times in bad taste (although nothing like the bad taste of some current movie humor).

I like all four of the main actors a lot, so I'm sorry to report I didn't really get into this listless and rather strained marital comedy this time around.

I love that scene where the phony doctor and nurse keep upstaging each other while on TV. What a sparkling little comedy from two of the best comedic actors of the time —Holliday and Lemmon. Holliday is less pixilated than usual, but then she does play a TV writer. Lemmon also has fewer tics than usual, but that doesn't hamper the laughs at all. They play a married couple who divorce when he prefers reading second-rate Mickey Spillane to her. Of course, once divorced, they pine for each other following a series of comedic misadventures.

That manic dance number alone is worth the price of admission. I just hope they did it in one take, otherwise get out the respirator. Then too the "whooshing" bed proves a great bit of comedic inspiration. Note how its whooshing back and forth becomes innuendo in that flashback scene where they first meet. And what a cutely appropriate final whoosh to the movie as a whole.

A lot of credit should go to ace screenwriter Axelrod, who devises a series of amusing episodes where Nina (Holliday) and Robert (Lemmon) try to out-do one another in the I'm-so-over-you department. He grows a mustache and gets a sports car, while she does what any woman is expected to do—she gets a new wardrobe. Meanwhile, that expert performer Jack Carson lends first-rate actorly support but questionable best-friend advice; at the same time, Kim Novak gets into the swing with a vivacious party-girl performance.

All in all, the set-ups wear well despite the years. Sure, it's only well done fluff. Still, I'm just sorry there weren't more Holliday-Lemmon pairings, since their styles blend so perfectly as this movie so humorously demonstrates.

Almost all US sex comedies of the 50's & 60's are dated now by a quaint leering approach to sex & marriage, not to mention the costumes, hair, settings. But the remarriage theme will always be ripe for romantic comedy fun. Here, George Axelrod got his start. He later wrote screenplays for "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter," "Breakfast At Tiffany's," "Goodbye Charlie," and in a dark mood, "The Manchurian Candidate." His style is comparable to Preston Sturges, using wit to slice through the social conventions. Judy Holliday & Jack Lemmon were a wonderful match. Judy could play an "everywoman" to Jack's "everyman" as in "It Should Happen To You." She could surprise & bedevil him with her mix of ditzines & intelligence. Their comic timing together seems effortlessly perfect. This film should be remembered more fondly.

If PHFFFT had been made in the '30s or '40s, it would have been done with Cary Grant and Jean Arthur as the couple (or Cary and Irene Dunne). But by 1954, JUDY HOLLIDAY and JACK LEMMON were paired once again (they starred previously in IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU), and proved to be a great comic team with perfect timing and good chemistry.

As it is, the story is a throwback to the '30s and the kind of screwball comedies Grant usually did. George Axelrod's script is about a couple who decide that their married life has become a bore and impulsively seek a divorce. They then settle down to the business of finding another mate and discover that the single life is not exactly a bed of roses.

Lemmon is matched with KIM NOVAK (a blind date arranged by JACK Carson), and Novak gets a chance to glow as an airhead with a Marilyn Monroe air of winsome charm but ditsy manners. She tries hard, but the character seems forced and her attempt to play the simple minded glamor girl comes across as strained and awkward.

But the show belongs to the shenanigans of Holliday and Lemon as they go through the paces of an amusing script with some laugh getting results. However, the material is thin and the ending is a rather predictable one with Judy successfully resisting the advances of JACK Carson and realizing who her own true love really is.

Fans of Holliday and Lemmon should enjoy it, but Kim Novak still had a lot to learn.

It's sort of like "The Awful Truth" as re-imagined by a '50s screenwriter with a smutty mind: Married couple divorce, try other partners, reunite. The high-school-boy-giggling-about-sex tone gets pretty heavy, but try to overlook that, because the film has so much to recommend it: New York location filming, early Kim Novak in a small part, and most of all, Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon. Was there ever a greater romantic comedy team? She's hysterically funny and amazingly touching at the same time, and he partners her perfectly. They're even sexy together -- it's not a quality you usually associate with either actor. Watch the "mambo" sequence, with their shifting feelings about each other played out in dance: a classic scene.

I'd rate these two over even Tracy and Hepburn. How sad that they made only two movies together.