Wonderful character development!

Very Cool!!!

Brilliant and touching

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

After seeing Glenn Ford in "The Mating of Millie" I was looking forward to watching this movie. In the "MOM" Ford played a witty, confident man full of personality and humor. I thought I would see this type of character in "The Courtship of Eddie's Father." Unfortunately, however, I discovered, that instead of a fun romantic comedy I got a bland, forgettable drama. Ford plays Tom Corbett, a widower, and Ron Howard plays Eddie, his son. I was somewhat surprised at some of the "adult" lines they gave Ron Howard to say, which I thought were unnecessary and inappropriate. There were also some pretty dramatic scenes (e.g., Eddie screaming bloody murder after finding one of his goldfish had died, etc.) that I hadn't expected, which just didn't seem to fit too well in this movie. Ford's character was somewhat likable, but too detached and dull. He really didn't have much personality at all. I was expecting some humor, but there were hardly any funny parts and the whole story involving Norman Jones (Jerry Van Dyke-his employee at the radio station he and Corbett worked at) and Dolly Daily (a woman Corbett met in town who was working on her "self-esteem" so she could fulfill her aspiration of becoming a beauty queen) was boring and superfluous to the story. I found both Norman and Dolly to be wooden and vapid characters. If you want to see a clean, witty, funny romance I highly recommend "The Mating of Millie" over this disappointment.

Didn't even know there was a movie before the TV version of The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Hubby & I caught this a couple weekends ago on TV - loved it! Sometimes these old movies are the best things to watch on TV. Amazing how you pay over $100 a month for TV and then find a gem like this because there is nothing else on. Ron Howard is as cute as can be - looked up info later on this movie, can't believe he was 8 years old. Shirley Jones is wonderful in this - I miss these kind of movies. So much crap out there today, fun to find something like this on TV to view! Always love it when the nice girl gets the guy! Thank goodness for TCM and AMC - we are always discovering "new to us" movies out there!

I grew up watching the t.v. series of this movie and I thought that it was cute. The movie version I watched today(2002). I am so confused about the charm of this movie. Ron Howard was the only reason I didn't turn this mess off. Eddie's father would have been brought up on charges of neglect by now. After the long scene when Eddie is missing and the neighbor tells the father to go home, he does. I couldn't get past that. If all of the melodrama was a setup to show what a devoted father Mr. Corbett was, it missed. No parent would not even want to SEE their child after he has been missing. He also didn't touch Eddie when he came home. I am not trying to rant, but the movie really lost me as to it's appeal in the sixties, or even the 80's or 90's. Again, Ronny Howard was the only saving grace.

A "heartwarming comedy"? Actually, it's rather chilling in its extremely dated weirdness. And not too much of a comedy either. It's fascinating in the way it's totally NOT what you'd think it would be. I at least thought little Eddie would be doing some cutesy matchmaking with the three prospects (blonde, redhead, and brunette)and creating the same sort of domestic comedy of errors you find in THE PARENT TRAP. But the relationships and storylines are strangely separate (especially the one featuring the ditsy Stella Stevens character, who should have been called Holly Golightly Lite). Little Ronnie Howard was one of the cutest Hollywood child actors and if not one of the best little actors, one of the most endearingly natural. The running bit about the "skinny eyes" of the bad ladies is a gem. When Glenn Ford quotes it angrily in a serious scene it's honestly hilarious. The best thing you can say about the movie is that it's uniquely true-to-life in its mixture of tragedy and whimsy and grief and yuks. Or is that the worst? The whole thing just seems so "off". Take the scene with the dead goldfish and little Eddie's screeching. Funny for four seconds than disturbing, even shocking, in the way it plays out for three minutes. Then there's the fact that Ford has been a widower for only a week or two when the matchmaking zaniness starts. The way that his grief is either crassly patronized or totally ignored. Minnelli's elegant camerawork seems jarringly ill-suited to the genre in spots. Ford makes Eddie's Father an idiosyncratically edgy and fidgety not-all-there nuerotic. Quite different from the stalwart and wise and only slightly goofy generic American Pop you imagine just from the title. (Similar to the one Brian Keith played in THE PARENT TRAP.) A must-see for nostalgic boomers just for the art direction. Dig that indigo blue on Dina Merrill's walls! As for Ford's final choice, let's just say that Eddie, in the wisdom of his six years, might have goofed.