Honeymoon

I admit it, I'm just a sucker for these kind of romantic comedy fluff movies! I'd much rather watch a delightful and charming romp like this than some of the greatest film dramas made! I prefer to giggle rather than weep when I watch a film. Am I alone in this preference? Somehow, I doubt it.

Honeymoon stars Shirley Temple, all grown up (and looking prettier on film here than she ever did, before or after), and her character is in love with a soldier (Guy Madison) and wants to marry him, unfortunately in a foreign country. There's all kinds of paperwork to be done, so she tries to get the process expedited by using an older man, Franchot Tone (playing an American consul) as intermediary. He feels a sort of obligation to her because she's young and on her own (the soldier is supposed to meet her, but he gets sidetracked). Some very funny maneuverings keep placing her in Franchot's way, when he is trying to romance a lady of his own age, and his betrothed becomes jealous. Soon Shirley's character is developing a crush on the older man and becoming impatient with her own fiancée's boyish qualities.

There's a great pool scene where Shirley walks out in a pretty and modest bathing suit, but boy! does she look simply stunning! The film has a rather conventional, predictable ending, but we still enjoy it, because it feels right anyway and is pretty funny. I wonder why the script ended with "I now pronounce you ... legally married." How odd. What happened to "man and wife"?

TCM airs this May-December romance several times a year. Don't miss it, especially if you are a Shirley or Franchot fan. They're so cute together!

9 out of 10

Franchot Tone is an American diplomatic officer in Mexico City. He's engaged to Linay Romay and has a bright future ahead of him. Then Shirley Temple shows up. She's supposed to marry Guy Madison, a corporal on leave from the Canal Zone. Only he's nowhere to be found.

Various things happen, including contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and Miss Temple will inevitably fall in love with Tone. This movie flopped hard, and there are several obvious reasons, beginning with Tone. He was stuck in this sort of role at the time, cast as the young man on the rise in his forties, exuding a slightly bewildered air proclaiming he should be doing Chekhov, not this tripe. Edward Cronjager seems at a loss as to how to photograph Miss Temple. Sometimes she looks 12, not yet grown out of her baby fat, and sometimes she looks a pretty young woman in her 20s. Also, she's playing a woolly-minded flibbbertigibbet, always changing her mind, and it's not really attractive.

One player who's spot on is Miss Romay as Tone's fiancee. She knew how diplomats and the people around them acted because she was the daughter of a diplomat, a Mexican consular attache in Los Angeles. With the right connections and talents, she became a singer in Xavier Cugat's band and married into the wealthy Gould family. She died in 2010 at the age of 91.

Very cute movie! Movies that are this simple are very comforting. Life and people should be this simple, where a clunk on the head is all it takes to realize true love. There's something very blissful about the simplicity in that. Most people try to complicate everything, but these old movies were known for being comforting, because I guess they largely didn't try to complicate anything. Bread and butter kind of film.

And while it does have a lot of wacky trouble throughout, it all culminates to a very beautiful speech given by the older man in the film, summarizing perfectly, how older people wish to get back to youth , and the youth wish to rush to maturity. It is a bittersweet monologue on how there really is no perfect point in time, except where we are at the moment. True perfection is to live blissfully in the moment.

Wow, who would've thought such a simple kind of slapstick romcom could hold such a valuable life lesson?! As I've said before, there really is no such thing as a bad golden age of Hollywood movie. This is proof - being one of them that has been labeled with the BAD title- how good it actually is! If this is what constitutes a bad movie by old Hollywood standards, then what does that say about today's new movie standards?! Seriously!

On another note, Shirley Temple is so beautiful in this film! Yes, there is beauty in every age, but looking at her perfect features, unmarred by the wrinkles of time, I admit it does make me wish that at least those of us of the fair sex could stay perpetually maiden like.

Anyway, good film! Very good film.

"Honeymoon" is a bad film. It's not terrible, but it is bad--mostly because the humor is very forced and the film seldom entertaining. More bluntly put, it tries way too hard to be kooky.

The film begins with an annoying young lady (Shirley Temple) coming to Mexico to marry a serviceman. However, through a long series of unbelievable and annoying situations (mostly caused by her), instead of the marriage coming off successfully, the diplomat who tries to help her (Franchot Tone) ends up getting in very hot water with everyone--particularly his fiancée who THINKS he's making time with this other woman.

The film is bad--mostly because the studio didn't seem to know what to do with Temple. While she possessed great talent, here they made her character really annoying and shrill--so much so that America's Sweetheart is now an annoying lady who seems to behave like a 14 year-old suffering through her first crush. She is supposed to be a woman...but rarely seems anything like one.

I never was much of a Shirley Temple fan; personally, I always thought she came across as sugary sweet and precocious as a child. In Honeymoon, she's twenty, and playing Barbara, meeting her fiance in Mexico City. Guy Madison is Corporal Vaughn, but they miss each other at the station. and along comes american consul Flanner (Franchot Tone) to help out. Although each time he "helps out", it seems to cause more trouble. and of course, everyone else is determined to mis-understand every move they make! studio regulars Gene Lockhart and Grant Mitchell are here in supporting roles. not to mention the uncredited cast of thousands. For a consul, no-one seems to respect Flanner, and he never seems to mention it, when people question his motives. I guess you have to buy into all the silliness. and clearly this was all done on the hollywood production lot. oddly, Tone made another film called "Lost Honeymoon" the very same year. he made so many films dealing with marriage and goofed up relationships. This one gets pretty silly, with slapstick humor and so many misunderstandings, it could be an episode of Three's Company, for those old enough to remember. More interesting as a historical highlight for Temple and Tone than for the story itself.