The Age of Commercialism

Excellent, a Must See

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This really isn't a very good movie. It's a curiosity due to Cary Grant appearing in the same movie as Jayne Mansfield. She looks good but that's it for her. Cary tries very hard but it's all just so terribly uninteresting. As a drama it has too much forced comedy and as a comedy it's too dramatic. I also tend to find Ray Walston annoying and this movie doesn't change that. I do like his work later in his career when he was an old man, though. There were quite a few of these naval comedies in the '50s and, of course, on television in the '60s. Not sure why but I would guess it's the usual Hollywood M.O. of copying something that was successful. After Mister Roberts it seems these things just started popping up every year.This movie is just a reminder of why, from the late '50s to the late '60s, Hollywood seemed to be in the dark ages. There are some great films made during that time, particularly from Hitchcock, but there are far more that were just completely forgettable. The studio system was pretty much dead and most of the talent from the '30s & '40s was either gone or past their primes. You could count the quality stars who came about in the '50s on one hand. So the period this move was made in was, in my opinion, the worst period for Hollywood movie-making and is only rivaled by maybe the early '90s.

There is a level of high expectation when you sit down to watch a comedy with a cast headed by Cary Grant, Jayne Mansfield, Ray Walston and Werner Klemperer. Those expectations are buoyed further when the film is directed by Stanley Donen, whose comic touch was so evident in, among others, DAMN YANKEES!, BEDAZZLED and CHARADE. For the first five minutes, or so, it seems that those expectations might be met and then…. Nothing. What is supposed to be a light comedy, plunges into leaden, heavy handed melodrama, with nary a chuckle to be had.Relative newcomer Suzy Parker has often been criticized for her performance, or lack of one, in this film, but in a movie in which even the great Cary Grant frequently appears flat and wooden, attacking Parker seems unfair. Not even as bright a light as an Audrey Hepburn or Doris Day could have changed the fortunes of this meandering, dreary and wholly pointless script, which drags itself lamely along and drags the viewer's interest and patience down with it.The rest of the cast, especially Ray Walston, keep trying to breath some life into the proceedings, but the horrible script is beyond resuscitation. The desperate, inane effort to drag a half hearted laugh from the numbed audience in the film's final moments only serves to add insult to injury.This film is nothing but a major disappointment on all levels.

This film was a critical and box-office fiasco back in 1957. It was based on a novel which was later turned into a play--which flopped on Broadway. The story is about some navy officers on leave in San Francisco during WWII. They have 4 day's leave which they spend at the Mark Hopkins hotel. The film meanders a lot and none of the characters seem very real. Cary Grant is generally brilliant in comedy and drama--but here he plays a sort of wheeler dealer and he doesn't really pull it off. Tony Curtis or James Garner would have been better choices. Audrey Hepburn was initially set to play opposite Grant, but had other commitments--so Suzy parker stepped in. She had never acted before, but was America's top photographic model at the time. I think that she did a good job, considering all the pressure that she was under. Grant's pairing with Jayne Mansfield in a few brief scenes--did not really work. The Studio was trying to give her some class by acting with Grant--but the character had no substance at all.

I wanted to love this movie. How could I not love it? Cary Grant, Jayne Mansfield, Stanley Donen; all icons in their own way. However, the train wreck that was Suzy Parker ruined the entire experience for me. Her acting was so appalling that I sat there with my jaw hanging open, not believing my eyes or ears. I could barely make it through one viewing, THAT'S how hideous she is in this.Cary? Gorgeous and in fine dramatic form. Jayne? Adorable, endearing, and obviously having a ball. The supporting cast does alright, and the city of San Francisco is captured in all its stunning, retro elegance.Then you see Suzy Parker attempting to speak her lines with a woodenness, a deadness, a cluelessness that simply defies belief. Who told this creature she could ACT?? Oy VEY, people.