Really Surprised!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

***User reviewer F Gwynplaine MacIntyre ("Splendid change-of-pace for Sellers", F Gwynplaine MacIntyre from Minffordd, North Wales, 6 February 2003) offers an excellent commentary; he has insight on the accents and other fascinating details. Also, ShadeGrenade from Ambrosia ("Lust for a librarian", ShadeGrenade from Ambrosia, 23 November 2010) provides interesting background about the origin of the play that is unsuccessfully staged.*** "Only Two Can Play," is a real gem; it is a British romantic comedy without any weak moments. The story's central giggle, that an ordinary library in Wales could consistently attract such a cavalcade of attractive women is handled very well. Almost all of the women who appear here are outrageously pretty. This includes the two lead females, Liz (Mai Zetterling) and Jean (Virginia Maskell). Maskell, uncommonly beautiful, portrays a hard-working wife and mother of two who is too tired for sex. Liz, the seducing socialite and home-wrecker is uncommonly fun company as we get to know her.Of course, the star is Peter Sellers (as John Lewis). Sellers delivers an awesome performance, his comic genius and acerbic verbal sparring (particularly with Richard Attenborough's avant-garde playwright, Gareth L. Probert) are both on display. Sidney Gilliat, the film's director, must have had an amazing experience to have directed the young Sellers, as the latter routinely turns common dialog into cinema magic. Sellers simultaneously displays his penchant for slapstick as well as being a believable romantic lead. He should have tried this more often.The story of a marriage in jeopardy is relatively simple. The dialog is often very conversational. The direction is solid. It isn't "laugh out loud" funny until the aftermath of the play. I found John's discovery that the play that he had not actually seen but nevertheless praised as a critic to be really amusing.The Welsh accents that the performers are attempting to adopt as well as some of the cultural references are occasionally difficult for an American audience to follow, but not unforgivably so. The litany of interruptions that prevent John from consummating his affair with Liz are pretty hilarious. Although John is pretty sure which woman he wants at the end, both compete for the audience's love.Virginia Maskell's experiences during this production (i.e., she is excellent but Sellers tried to have her replaced) and afterward (i.e., depression, suicide) are of great interest to many who love this film. We get to watch screen performers knowing what is in store for them. In this way they live forever."Only Two Can Play" is a romantic comedy that most adults will greatly enjoy.

"Only Two Can Play" may be the closest Peter Sellers came to playing a normal human being in good movies. A genius of voices, building his characters from the vocal chords out, Sellers was usually at his tip-tip playing off-kilter characters.Here, working with little more than a soft Welsh dialect (which he maintains fairly well, with only a few strange excursions into other vocal realms), Sellers builds a believable character who is unhappy with his inconsequential job and in his marriage (to the tragic Virginia Maskell). Suddenly his life is enlivened by the exotic wife of an influential figure who (rather inexplicably) gets the hots for Sellers' character, and who can also put in a word for him to get a better job in return for certain favors Sellers is more than willing to pay.The film gets considerable mileage over what goes wrong every time the two try to consummate their affair. Overall, though, the tone is low-key and the film never really takes off. "Only Two Can Play" is a must for Sellers' fans, but don't expect any of his wackier creations.Nevertheless, it shows that Sellers may not have given himself enough credit, and he may have been woefully used in more normal parts that required just a slight accent.

This movie is so dated that to watch it nowadays gives you the feeling of watching an early movie, "A Trip to the Moon" --1902-- for example.But "A Trip to the Moon" can be accepted if we place our mind at that time, with that technology, etc. as a museum piece, a curiosity. Not this movie though, where from the initial 1950s title the whole thing is redolent of naphthalene, and that feeling goes on with a sudden close up of Peter Seller (as funny as yesterday morning flat and cold soufflé) and it goes on in a very Kingsley Amis (the author of this book) way, a way as old fashioned as the treatment for this movie.What a turkey! Peter Sellers is totally miscast for this rol, because if we consider that the character, according to the females reaction when seeing him, was an instant turn on, he, obviously, doesn't fit the rol by a long shot (a Sean Connery was needed here).He was SO blah! and the women that were supposed to be bombshells, were totally ruined with that 1950s look --exagerated (ridiculous) pointed bust, waists cinched to death and beehive hairdos-- the only exception being Virginia Maskell (Sellers wife in the movie) a lovely, natural beauty, fortunately without all that paraphernalia that was the last cry for the fashion of that time. Everything is old fashion in this movie, the situations (many of them pathetic), the pacing, the editing, the camera work, the acting. Some comments mentioned "the humor"... I'm flabbergasted... was there humor in this movie? I totally missed it. I don't get it, English movies are usually exceptionally good, but this one in particular is impossibly bad, as bad as Mr. Amis literature.

This is a wonderful opportunity to see the lovely - and ultimately tragic - Virginia Maskell who illuminates every scene in which she appears. We can only thank God that the vastly overrated ego-tripping Peter Sellers was foiled by director Syndey Gilliat in his efforts to have her replaced. Sellers himself walks through the part of a horny and vaguely discontented librarian who is equally frustrated in his attempts at sex with a more than willing Mai Zetterling - as I haven't read the book it's unclear whether screenwriter Bryan Forbes stole the idea of the lower class male having an affair with the foreign-born wife of a wealthy businessman himself (from John Braine's Room At The Top, filmed four years earlier) or whether the culprit was Kingles Amis in his original novel. Whatever it doesn't really come off as there is a notable lack of sexual chemistry between Sellers and Zetterling. Forbes, notorious for featuring his wife, Nanette Newman, in his movies, clearly stretches that to close friends and tailored a cameo for his great friend Richard 'Bunter' Attenborough. Though badly dated it's still worth seeing for Virginia Maskell.