How to Commit Marriage

Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason do spew a few really funny one liners, but the movie has the look and feel of a TV sitcom. Jane Wyman wears the same hairstyle here that she has had since the early 50's and I think she is still wearing it the same way! This movie is harmless fluff, but it is fun to watch Bob & Jackie insult each other. Many famous faces in this movie, Tina Louise, Tim Matheson, Joanna Cameron who later went on to the Saturday morning kids show "Shazaam & Isis". Maureen Arthur is quite funny as a big breasted client of Bob. After Jane gives her the once over staring at her cleavage, Maureen gets off the barb, "Well, it's nothing you couldn't buy"! Many fat jokes at Jackie's expense. Too bad the whole movie couldn't have been as funny as some of the jokes. Still, not as hard to watch as all the garbage they pass off as entertainment today! (Friends, Survivor, etc)

Wow, when you see how Hollywood portrays the social revolution in the sixties, you can see why people had to rebell!!! The writing is definitely in the tone of the grown-ups making fun of the band names during the sixties.

It was surprising to see Tim Matheson in this movie. Also Tina Louise of Gilligan's Island fame. Leslie Nielsen is another one who is still popular.

But who is that sensitive sixties band with the dreamy sound and the groovy philosophy? They're called "The Comfortable Chair" in the movie, but embarrassing as it is to admit, they sound like a real band from the time. Someone like "Small Faces", or whatever their name was.

Amusingly salty farce brings Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason into the swinging 1960s--and just in time! Hope and Jane Wyman agree to end their stale marriage after 19 years, just as their daughter decides to drop out of college and join a rock group with her boyfriend. Turns out she's also pregnant, and has been persuaded to put her baby up for adoption by a (bribed) Indian guru, so Hope and Wyman conspire to adopt the child under the guise of an Irish couple (don't ask). Gleason is Hope's would-be in-law, a rock music promoter who holds a grudge against Bob for a years-old real estate transaction that ended up in the mud. Tatty-looking comedy (with unflattering hairstyles) stays afloat on some funny one-liners, but loses momentum during two pointless sequences: a golf match involving a chimpanzee and the slapstick finale, an endless dig at the Maharishi. Despite this, Hope, Gleason and Wyman (and Tina Louise as Gleason's main squeeze) manage bright performances, and director Norman Panama excels with a romantic fantasy scene and also the opening montage, a cynical jab at married life. **1/2 from ****

America's favorite comedian gets all caught up in the Age of Aquarius when his free-thinking daughter drops out of college to join a rock group and search for spiritual enlightenment under the guidance of a bumbling Persian mystic. But there's a twist to the usual generation gap scenario. Bob's wayward kid wants to do the "establishment thing" by tying the knot with her composer boyfriend while her parents have (secretly) decided to call it a day on the marital front.

Hope's shot at impersonating the aforementioned guru, complete with flowing robes, turban, fake beard and a drooping orchid which he uses to "bless" his "disciples" provides plenty of chuckles. Another change of costume sees him decked out in a Nehru jacket and sporting a groovy hairstyle as he takes a "space trip" to some pot-filled Go- Go joint down on Sunset.

Although a few of the gags fall flat others work just fine as Bob and Jackie Gleason team up to add some real sparkle to the film's better moments.

Hope to the perpetually loaded Gleason: "And about your breath... you could start the windmill on an old Dutch painting".

Bob had just about lost interest in the big screen by this late stage, having decided to concentrate on his top rating TV shows instead. This was, in fact, his second last theatrical release. And , although it won't be remembered as being one of his best, it's actually a pretty sharp satire of some of the more nonsensical, new age clap trap what was permeating western culture at the time. Even the Beatles quickly realized that they were being taken on a one way elephant ride to fantasy land by their own giggling guru.

As for this one, it's a low key walk - thru which doesn't demand much of its stars but it still generates enough laughs along the way to keep it going.

Not outstanding but fun

The daughter of Bob Hope and Jane Wyman and the son of Jackie Gleason are in love and ready to wed. What they don't know is Hope and Wyman are considering divorce. Gleason has some rather negative view on marriage in the first place. They find out and it shatters some illusions.

Since it's the Sixties, what to do but go live together. Of course with a blessed event arriving that does complicate things.

Now the young folks, Tim Matheson and JoAnna Cameron are presented as fairly intelligent people. So why anyone would listen to religious faker Irwin Corey and give the kid up for adoption is beyond me. But that's what the film asks you to believe.

Two of the funniest men of the last century were Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason. So why they got stuck with a mediocre story idea like this is beyond me. I can't believe that the two of them had they looked could have found a better story idea.

When a golf playing Marquis Chimp steals the film you know you've got trouble.