Honeymoon

Honeymoon is a sweet comedy starring two very capable actors. Shirley Temple is all grown up here, almost, as a seventeen year old who wants to wed her soldier boyfriend. The two plan to meet in Mexico City, but problems arise with arriving on time. They only have a short amount of time to marry so they want to make use of all the time they have as man and wife. However, absolutely everything happens to prevent that from happening. Temple enlists the help of a man from the American Consolate (Franchot Tone) to assist her, but she causes more problems for him than he could ever imagine.

Temple is certainly different than the little girl everyone remembers her as. She does the same movements with her mouth, but she has matured into a very beautiful young woman. She has a knack for comedy so she excels in this film. Tone equals her. He is older than in his Joan Crawford days, but he has the same sweet face and strong acting talent. He seems to have gotten smarter over the years which enables him to be a dominant figure as well as a funny one.

I admit it, I'm just a sucker for these kind of romantic comedy fluff movies! I'd much rather watch a delightful and charming romp like this than some of the greatest film dramas made! I prefer to giggle rather than weep when I watch a film. Am I alone in this preference? Somehow, I doubt it.

Honeymoon stars Shirley Temple, all grown up (and looking prettier on film here than she ever did, before or after), and her character is in love with a soldier (Guy Madison) and wants to marry him, unfortunately in a foreign country. There's all kinds of paperwork to be done, so she tries to get the process expedited by using an older man, Franchot Tone (playing an American consul) as intermediary. He feels a sort of obligation to her because she's young and on her own (the soldier is supposed to meet her, but he gets sidetracked). Some very funny maneuverings keep placing her in Franchot's way, when he is trying to romance a lady of his own age, and his betrothed becomes jealous. Soon Shirley's character is developing a crush on the older man and becoming impatient with her own fiancée's boyish qualities.

There's a great pool scene where Shirley walks out in a pretty and modest bathing suit, but boy! does she look simply stunning! The film has a rather conventional, predictable ending, but we still enjoy it, because it feels right anyway and is pretty funny. I wonder why the script ended with "I now pronounce you ... legally married." How odd. What happened to "man and wife"?

TCM airs this May-December romance several times a year. Don't miss it, especially if you are a Shirley or Franchot fan. They're so cute together!

9 out of 10

Frothy, bubbly romantic comedies are supposed to get off the ground and sail into the air with ease. No such luck with 'Honeymoon'. The whole story is a trivial bit of nonsense about a girl who elopes to Mexico City to find her serviceman husband and get married. When a vice consul attempts to help her, he gets caught in romantic complications of his own with a jealous fiance. And that's it.

The slim plot gets adequate performances from the three leads: Shirley Temple, Franchot Tone and Guy Madison. Madison is less wooden than usual and manages to add a likeable personality to his handsome good looks. Shirley pouts and speaks childishly of her love for him until she starts to fall for Tone. It's all very silly and quite predictable. All it does is pass the time in a modestly entertaining way but don't expect anything special. Shirley is even given a romantic ballad to sing but it doesn't sound like her own voice. Since this was made before Marni Nixon got busy, you have to wonder who it was.

Summing up: Passes the time pleasantly enough but worthwhile only for true Temple fans who want to see her as a pretty young woman.

Franchot Tone is an American diplomatic officer in Mexico City. He's engaged to Linay Romay and has a bright future ahead of him. Then Shirley Temple shows up. She's supposed to marry Guy Madison, a corporal on leave from the Canal Zone. Only he's nowhere to be found.

Various things happen, including contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and Miss Temple will inevitably fall in love with Tone. This movie flopped hard, and there are several obvious reasons, beginning with Tone. He was stuck in this sort of role at the time, cast as the young man on the rise in his forties, exuding a slightly bewildered air proclaiming he should be doing Chekhov, not this tripe. Edward Cronjager seems at a loss as to how to photograph Miss Temple. Sometimes she looks 12, not yet grown out of her baby fat, and sometimes she looks a pretty young woman in her 20s. Also, she's playing a woolly-minded flibbbertigibbet, always changing her mind, and it's not really attractive.

One player who's spot on is Miss Romay as Tone's fiancee. She knew how diplomats and the people around them acted because she was the daughter of a diplomat, a Mexican consular attache in Los Angeles. With the right connections and talents, she became a singer in Xavier Cugat's band and married into the wealthy Gould family. She died in 2010 at the age of 91.

This is an engaging little trifle, the kind of innocuous fluff that was a staple of the studios during the Golden Age.

Shirley Temple's films as a young adult are a mixed lot at best but this one does show off her genuine gift for comedy, certainly not as well as her next film The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer would but she does handle her role here with a deft touch. Made when she was just eighteen it also shows that as a young girl she was quite a lovely lass.

Franchot Tone, that marvelous actor so often ill used by Hollywood, brings his exasperated charm to bear on his role of a put upon diplomat trying to help out Shirley and the young and impossibly handsome Guy Madison. Speaking of Guy, his role of the frustrated prospective groom doesn't really require much of him but earnest attractiveness and he fills that well.

All in all silly and light as a feather this confection breaks absolutely no new ground but does showcase its stars to pleasing advantage. What more can you ask from a slight entertainment like this.