Forever, Darling

Lucy and Desi return in a film about what happens when the love starts to leave the marriage of their characters, Susan and Lorenzo. It's not a wacky comedy like The Long, Long Trailer or I Love Lucy, but it's more sweetly poignant and gently humorous. I especially like the scene where Susan and Lorenzo are at a movie and he falls asleep, and she screams and wakes him up right away! The startled, confused look on Desi's face is priceless! And for 60s TV buffs, Nancy Kulp (Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies) and Natalie Schafer (Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island) are both in this film. Definitely worth renting.

This is a perfect example of how two great stars can make a bad film as a result of a very bad script. I love Lucy and Desi like everybody else, but getting through this movie is sheer torture. The fact that this movie has less than 50 votes indicates I'm not alone on this.

Saw this today and enjoyed it very much. Lucy and Desi of course are great and here seemed more like real people and less like stereotyped caricatures. Though made in the Fifties, much of the relationship philosophy here seemed sound and to still ring true today. One need only to look at I Love Lucy to see that limited options for wives were a widely accepted norm at that time, but this film tires to question and break out of that. When Susan is told that she and her husband have been traveling two separate paths for a long time, she asks something along the lines of, "Does the woman always have to follow her husband's path?" Her angel laughs and says "Of course not!" but gives good reasons why that's what she needs to do at this point. The well-intentioned but scary Fifties attitude toward the environment was uncomfortable but the marriage advice seemed good. The Long, Long Trailer may have had more laughs but this was more satisfying. And anything that ends in Yosemite is a plus.

Only after a while since I watched "The long, long trailer" I have discovered this movie that brings Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz back together in a feature film, only this time it lacks much more. The jokes are still there but there are only a few of them that really hit the mark. The plot is somewhat similar to the "Trailer" having to deal with marital problems all over again and this time it feels unnatural and strained making the movie a lot harder to sit through and try and get some grains of wisdom it offers you. Some scenes are overly long and simply ill-fitting to the whole plot but what makes all of them points fade is naturally the pair of Lucy and Desi - although we've seen them quarrel millions of times it's still is a great pleasure to observe them. This movie shows us new sides of them both that we haven't noticed before, highlighting their performances and making us think of our own relationships and what can be done to prevent bad things from happening.

First of all, I am a big I Love Lucy fan. I own this movie as part of the three movie DVD set (Forever Darling; Long Long Trailer; Too Many Girls). This is the least enjoyable of the three.

Even being a big Lucy/Desi fan, I didn't find much to enjoy about this movie. Even the funny scenes weren't funny. This is a pretty boring movie. It's kind of like a long, unfunny I Love Lucy episode in color. And when the two main characters fight, you can't help but think of how Lucy and Desi fought in real life.

I will say that the camping scenes looked so beautiful that it made me want to take my husband up on his standing offer to go camping together.