Y fueron felices

Don't you love it when the title of a film has no vowels? And when it has an exclamation mark, too! It makes pronouncing it even more fun. Never mind spelling it correctly. (And I am usually a decent speller.)

At any rate, Judy Holliday (whose last name I finally learned how to spell) enjoys an easy chemistry with costar Jack Lemmon in this film. She may very well be one of the zaniest comediennes ever. Her expressions, the way she uses her voice, and the mambo dance number where she contorts her body-- make watching this movie almost illegal. Add Kim Novak to the mix as a light-headed chick that Lemmon dates on the rebound from Holliday and you have a criminally good time.

The four stars make a marvelous quadrangle, and the physical comedy is great. My one disappointment is Richard Quine's direction. Lemmon must've liked him because they did at least 3 movies together, but he always seems to be trying to unexplicably extract pathos out of screwball situations, and this technique quickly wears thin. That aside, still a lot of fun.

Almost all US sex comedies of the 50's & 60's are dated now by a quaint leering approach to sex & marriage, not to mention the costumes, hair, settings. But the remarriage theme will always be ripe for romantic comedy fun. Here, George Axelrod got his start. He later wrote screenplays for "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter," "Breakfast At Tiffany's," "Goodbye Charlie," and in a dark mood, "The Manchurian Candidate." His style is comparable to Preston Sturges, using wit to slice through the social conventions. Judy Holliday & Jack Lemmon were a wonderful match. Judy could play an "everywoman" to Jack's "everyman" as in "It Should Happen To You." She could surprise & bedevil him with her mix of ditzines & intelligence. Their comic timing together seems effortlessly perfect. This film should be remembered more fondly.

One summer night as a high-school-age teen with nothing to do, I watched this movie on TV. I had never seen Judy Holliday before and I suppose part of my enjoyment of the film was discovering how good she was. I already knew Jack Lemmon was good. I thought the film was funny and delightful from start to finish.

At any rate, a lot of years later, I watched Phffft again, and was very disappointed. I really want to see it a third time, now, because I wonder if I was just in a bad mood, or something. I don't understand how my reaction could be so different. I found it dull and slow-moving, and most surprisingly, not very funny. It also looked kind of cheaply made, and it probably was (cheapness being sort of a hallmark of Columbia Pictures, unless it was a big, important film - and even then, sometimes).

I can usually get into an older film and appreciate the humor based on what was humorous then, but I found a lot of the wit too dated to enjoy, and even at times in bad taste (although nothing like the bad taste of some current movie humor).

I like all four of the main actors a lot, so I'm sorry to report I didn't really get into this listless and rather strained marital comedy this time around.

It's sort of like "The Awful Truth" as re-imagined by a '50s screenwriter with a smutty mind: Married couple divorce, try other partners, reunite. The high-school-boy-giggling-about-sex tone gets pretty heavy, but try to overlook that, because the film has so much to recommend it: New York location filming, early Kim Novak in a small part, and most of all, Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon. Was there ever a greater romantic comedy team? She's hysterically funny and amazingly touching at the same time, and he partners her perfectly. They're even sexy together -- it's not a quality you usually associate with either actor. Watch the "mambo" sequence, with their shifting feelings about each other played out in dance: a classic scene.

I'd rate these two over even Tracy and Hepburn. How sad that they made only two movies together.