Man's Favorite Sport?

Rock Hudson stars as a man posing as a fishing expert who basically passes on information from one customer to another. He has written a best selling book on fishing and no one knows he's a fraud, not even his fiancée. He is shocked to learn his boss has entered him into a fishing contest and doesn't know what to do until Paula Prentiss and Maria Perschy tell him they got him involved and are going to teach him to fish. This is a pretty good comedy but it does have a little too much slapstick in it. There are some scenes that are taken from Bringing Up Baby and Howard Hawks did ask Cary Grant to be in this movie but he said no because he didn't want to be seen on screen with women who a lot younger then he was. The movie is two hours long and goes by pretty quickly.

Howard Hawks did of course create the classic _Bringing Up Baby_ and some comparison between _Favorite_ as a 26-year update of the former is inevitable. Hawks did plenty of screwball comedies, but above all, Hawks was a director who made GUY films; _Red River_ may be the ultimate man's man film of all time. And to some extent, this film is about Willoughby's (Hudson's) fraudulent expertise in "manly" activities such as camping, outdoor activities and--most critical to the plot--fishing.

Life is good for Hudson as the expert fisherman who is big man at Abercrombie and Fitch, until brash Abby Page (Prentiss) destroys his serene existence with a publicity stunt of having Hudson enter an annual fishing contest.

After resisting the idea, Hudson is soon forced to confess he's never fished in his life--that his reputation is a hoax. Rather than sensibly abandon the scheme, Prentiss decides she can teach Hudson how to fish in 3 days. This inevitably leads to all sorts of misadventures as Hudson is so inept he can't even swim! Some of the more amusing sequences are Hudson's inflatable waders exploding underwater, having a bear steal his trail-bike, or literally running across the surface of the lake to escape another bear. Some of the gags work better than others; the gags range from leisurely to elaborate, but all in good fun.

The fast-talking overlapping dialog is pure Hawks and (the uncredited) Brackett, and is wonderful.

Hudson has been criticized for not being Cary Grant (how could anyone be?) but he actually develops his own persona, different from both Grant and his own Hudson-Day characterizations. In this film, he is partially browbeaten by Prentiss and her sidekick Perschy, but ultimately, he voluntarily suffers through his ordeals as a matter of penance.

Paula on the other hand is a complete success: perky, beautiful, brash, and unpredictable--she gives a spectacularly energetic performance. This is the sole film is where Prentiss has the script and the screen time to refine her comic persona. While Perschy and Holt exist to create a triangle and fuel the high-jinx, they also define the limits of the Prentiss character; she is neither exotic like Perschy nor sultry like Holt. In comparison, she is pleasantly and very prettily tomboyish, often wearing outdoor sporting wear, and thoroughly competent at all things in which Hudson had professed expertise.

When compared with _Baby_, _Favorite_ perhaps begins with a potentially even richer premise, and is less fanciful, disposing of rich Connecticut dowagers and University endowments. But it never quite builds to the same frenetic pace and lacks the absurdity of the situations Grant finds himself in: remember "Mr. Bone?" Hawks does lift sequences right out of _Baby_ when Hudson shadows Perschy because the back of her dress is open, the "Love impulse in men manifests itself in conflict" from Dr. Lehman is used by Easy, the fish in the pants comes out of _Monkey Business_.

Yet the films are quite different. Grant's character is entirely asocial while Hudson's is the leader of the Hawksian male group. Furthermore, Hepburn is quickly determined to snare Grant, while Prentiss is to the end ambivalent or in self-denial.

I've seen it commented (including by the Voice film critic Molly Haskell) that the film is more satisfying when seen for the second time, and I wholeheartedly agree with this. This review replaces one which was not quite so laudatory. Three times is even better. Familiarity, in the case of this film, breeds endearment.

The sad part is that Paula Prentiss is so lovely and talented to watch in this film, and clearly the critics had huge expectations of her career, yet the next year she would do only three small parts in ensemble casts before withdrawing from films entirely for the next five years. These years, from when she was 26 through 31, were those where she certainly would have become a huge star.

This movie combines elements of Hawks' screwball comedies of the 30ies and the Doris Day "sex comedies" of the 60ies... turned out to be very funny! The idea of an author of books about fishing with no idea of fishing is good for many funny situations - for he eventually has to learn it,observed by two energetic young ladies. Rock Hudson makes a good figure,but Paula Prentiss and Maria Perschy are even better - they both give incredibly funny,magnificent performances! I liked this movie...

Rock Hudson (in a role originally offered Cary Grant) and Paula Prentiss work beautifully together in this battle-of-the-sexes film from the early 60's. It's a shame that the studio didn't team the two up again, as they had a definite chemistry together (not unlike Rock had with Doris Day).

I once met Paula backstage at a play she was appearing in and asked her to sign a lobby card showing the sexy "sleeping bag" scene from this film. She looked at the card, sighed, and said: "That was a fun scene to shoot. Rock was a good kisser!"

Some reviewers have criticized the studio-bound look (Bringing Up Baby wasn't???), flat, high- key photography, the fact Rock Hudson isn't Cary Grant, that much of the comedy is slapstick (which, I guess, means physical and visual), that gags are recycled from older films......I mean, who cares? This is a total delight, probably the best comic roles Prentiss and Hudson ever had, and one of the funniest post World War 2 movies of all. Today, the 6th or 7th time I've seen it, I found when it was over I wanted to go out and buy a DVD of it.

Hawks' films may not have the pictorial qualities that Ford's, Welles', and Hitchcock's had, but when it came to involving you in a group of characters and their silly, yet somehow believable, antics, he had no superiors. It's not surprising it took the French New Wave, with their impatience for tired and predictable dramatic conventions, to finally recognize and rank Hawks at the very highest level of film artists.