JackCerf

This is a variant of what I call a Three Girls movie. In a Three Girls Movie, three young women learn about life, which is to say actually about men, and some or all of them find love and a happy ending. There's always the heroine, the naif, who often gets hurt, and a third who is either wild or salty. Three Coins In A Fountain, The Best Of Everything, and Where The Boys Are are more or less contemporary examples to this; Mystic Pizza is a later version.

Here the twist is that the Three Girls are grown women -- successful models in their 20s -- who think that they are fully wised up about life and men. Their plan is to rent a swank apartment that they can't afford and use it as a base of operations to catch rich husbands. It turns out that two of the three are surprised by love, and the most self assured and worldly wise of them by a double surprise.

The three gorgeous actresses -- Bacall, Monroe and Grable -- make it fun to watch. There are a couple of enjoyable bits -- one where a cheating husband is caught out despite all his precautions because his is the 50 millionth car to cross the George Washington Bridge, and one where Monroe's gorgeous but extremely nearsighted character falls into good fortune by refusing to wear her glasses. There are a couple of cute inside jokes, one about Grable's real life husband and one about Bacall's.

But on the whole it moves very slowly, padded with too many long establishing shots designed to show the 50s audience either the wondrous glamour of New York or the airline that paid for a product placement. The surprise ending is telegraphed way too early, and it depends on Bacall's character, who is supposed to be both shrewd and mercenary, failing to do a little research about the man who is pursuing her. The ending feels hurried and perfunctory.

It's ok and moderate fun, but hardly a classic. If you want to see Monroe at the top of her game, watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes instead.