Sam el sinvergüenza

Jack Lemmon stands at the top of his profession when it comes to comedy. No other actor has his sense of timing or expressive manners to offer competition to the master. "Good Neighbor Sam" is Lemmon at his best. Playing the average guy next door who gets into all kinds of problems through mostly no fault of his own. Everyone will enjoy this movie and the other Lemmon films similar to it. I rated this a 7.

Jack Lemmon was groomed at Columbia and what a run Lemmon had... working as co star to glamor girls Rita Hayworth, Doris Day and Kim Novak in a series of great films. Jack Lemmon was also loaned out to WB for his Oscar winning Mr. Roberts working with Henry Fonda, William Powell and directed by John Ford, and loaned out to UA for Billy Wilder's comedic masterpiece Some Like It Hot with the peerless Marilyn Monroe, and Joe E Brown. (All four: Wilder, Monroe, Brown and Lemmon ought to have won Oscars).

Good Neighbor Sam was one of if not the last film Jack Lemmon made at Columbia Pictures, and it is a riotous film co starring Romy Schneider, Mike Connors, Edward G Robinson and the dazzling Dorothy Provine (on loan from Ms Provine's studio Warner Bros). Dorothy Provine should have been a major movie star.

David Swift who directed Pollyanna with Jane Wyman, a film that made Hayley Mills a star and other fine films such as Mr. Lemmon's Under The Yum Yum Tree directs here and creates a lot of fun. The cast is superb.

This is a laugh out loud funny film, and one of Jack Lemmon's true gems.

When Good Neighbor Sam was released in 1964 Jack Lemmon was being taken seriously as a dramatic actor as well as a light comic actor as witnessed by the rave reviews he got for The Apartment and Days of Wine and Roses. While Good Neighbor Sam doesn't stack up against those two films in Lemmon's career, it's still an amusing and pleasing romp.

Have you ever noticed how many films like Good Neighbor Sam start out with a mistaken impression? Through a lie told by Romy Schneider who is the good neighbor that Sam has, people in her life and in his get the impression that they are married. He's married to Dorothy Provine and she's married to Michael Connors. And both for their own reasons have to keep the deception up. All the situations the principal players get into stem from the original white lie.

It would be so much easier if everyone told the truth from the gitgo, but then we wouldn't have a movie.

Lots of familiar names pop up here in support. Edward Andrews as the unctuous boss of the advertising agency Lemmon works for, Louis Nye as the creative private detective who gets it wrong, and last but not definitely not least Edward G. Robinson as the puritanical dairy king.

Minor league Lemmon, but still fun. And as another reviewer says, that theme is unforgettable. You'll have it in your brain for days.

The film begins well with its depiction of 1960s suburbia, the introduction of the Bissell family (including the ducks), the amusing jibes at the advertising industry (including the inaccurate but hilarious depiction of the filming of a Hertz car rental commercial), provides some great performances from all the principals, and from a great supporting cast, such as Edward Andrews, R.Q. Jones, and Neil Hamilton. It has a smart, yet affectionate quality to it. But as the film chugs along, it seems to run out of steam, as the gags keep repeating themselves, and it begins to seem more like a less successful imitation of the popular Doris Day/Rock Hudson romantic comedies of the time, and one can begin to understand why Lemmon didn't put this one in the top drawer of his memories.

I also saw this movie as a child, and fell in love with it. I particularly liked the wacky gadgets Sam would build, and the theme song (by Frank De Vol) is very catchy. One time when it was on TV, I was able to make an audio tape of it on this crummy little portable real-to-real tape recorder my dad gave me. I played it so much that I was able to memorize whole lines of dialog - "you can't alter a man's death-bed request with a lot of childish spying and gossip. Now obviously this man and woman are husband and wife, Mr and Mrs Howard Ebbets, and as such, I set the distribution of the Lagerlof will for 9am tomorrow morning. Now good day..."

It's nice to see Mike Connors in a pre-Mannix role, and you can never get enough of Louis Nye. Edward G Robinson does a good job of playing the wealthy dairyman, Mr Nurdlinger. Plus his participation gives the whole production a needed bit of weight. This is the kind of movie they're talking about when they say - "they don't make 'em like that anymore." And I say, it's our loss.