How Sweet It Is!

In his recent memoir James Garner said he hated this film. But he and Debbie Reynolds were enough professional to keep How Sweet It Is at least tolerably amusing for their fans. A nice supporting cast certainly helps in that cause.

Garner is a professional photographer whose job keeps him globe-trotting and both wife Reynolds and son Donald Losby get to trot the globe with him when his boss prevails on him to be the photographer on his daughter's European tour with her student group. Losby goes along as his assistant to spend time with Hilary Thompson who is the boss's daughter whom he's going out with. Reynolds makes it three, but even that doesn't quite work out as they are assigned bachelor quarters with the chaperons and not a married suite on the boat. Now that was a bit too much to swallow.

Even worse Reynolds gets taken by conman Terry-Thomas for a $1000.00 dollars when he rents her a house on the Riviera which is just slightly already owned by French lawyer Maurice Ronet. Debbie gets Ronet's hormones into overdrive especially seeing her in a bikini. Looking real good for the mother of a teenage son.

Garner also has tour guide Mary Michael interested in him. And Losby who Thompson takes for granted perks up when blond bombshell Alexandra Hay shows him some interest and some body.

But as good as this cast is and it also includes Paul Lynde as an officious purser on the ship it's all rehashed and recycled stuff from other and better films.

Debbie Reynolds and James Garner star as a couple that L-O-V-E each other passionately but maybe don't trust each other as much as they say they do. Both get propositioned while in Europe and jealousy takes hold. What follows is hilarity and sexual tension that oozes off the screen. Bonus points if you can spot the cameo by Penny Marshall!

From a time in which movies were much more innocent, 'How Sweet It Is' is one of many comedies from the sixties that had to rely on script, timing, and facial expression instead of today's toilet humor to make audiences laugh. Not the funniest of the lot, but far from the worst.

James Garner and Debbie Reynolds are a married couple accompanying their teenage son as chaperones on a trip to Europe. Aboard the ocean liner, they are constantly trying to rekindle their romance by interludes in various cubbyholes of the ship. It's worth watching just to see the look of disgust on Paul Lynde's face and hear him sneer "Animals!" when he discovers them hiding in a lifeboat. Misunderstandings, jealousy, a rogue Frenchman, and a close encounter with divorce are in store before their European trip is over.

James Garner displays a knack for comedy, which he will later refine in his "Support Your Local Sheriff/Gunfighter" movies.

Good, clean fun if anyone is interested in that sort of thing nowadays. Kind of like a Rock Hudson/Doris Day movie. (Those were great, too!)

Action photographer Grif Henderson (James Garner) is not so concerned about his hippie son Davey but his wife Jenny (Debbie Reynolds) is a different story. Davey wants to go to Europe with his girlfriend Bootsie Wax but Jenny rejects it out of hand. Grif gets an assignment following Bootsie and a bunch of school girls in Europe making it a trip for the whole family. Jenny makes her travel arrangements with a con man which sets her up on an outrageous adventure.

This is writing partners Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall. For any Happy Days fans, there is a tiny little Erin Moran in a Garry Marshall movie. I don't really understand why the couple would split up on an European trip. Grif may be fine to send Davey alone on a trip but he would be a fool to send away his wife. The premise needs something more to explain itself. I actually had a bit of fun with these comedic acting veterans like the lifeboat scene. The whole thing is twisted into a contrived sitcom premise which is understandable for a couple of sitcom writers. The split story telling stalls out the pacing for those sections. The movie seems intent on separating the couple for as long as possible. As for the kids, there is a large drop off in skill level and their part of the movie suffers. I was expecting more for the cat-house although it does get in some good slapstick. In the end, the marital conflict isn't fun when it could have been. I like some of Debbie Reynolds' work but the movie is always a little awkward.

The advent of tv in the 1950s and 60s caused a steep decline in movie ticket sales. The Hollywood studios didn't like that, of course, but it convinced them, out of desperation, to make movies that did things Americans couldn't see on tv, and that was often liberating. We got spectacular color, because tv was still b&w. We got exotic locales shot in wide-screen format - the most famous example was Around the World in Eighty Days - because tvs had small screens and focused on live programming from the States.

And we got sex. Lots of sex. Because, of course, there was no talk of sex on tv then.

Keep that in mind when you watch this sex comedy - because that's what it is - played very well by James Garner and a very attractive Debbie Reynolds, who doesn't look like she could have been the mother of a horny adolescent but in fact was. (She still doesn't look her age.)

The plot is very obvious. Garner, a Hemingway-like photographer of big game who is always talking about "being a man", is sent to photograph a high school girls tour of Paris. His wife, Reynolds, gets to go along, as does their son, who is in love with one of the girls. (That story, thankfully, gets almost no screentime. This is not a movie about teenagers for teenagers.) Garner gets hit on repeatedly by the attractive tour guide, but clearly is not interested. Reynolds becomes the object of interest of the very handsome owner of the very luxurious villa in the south of France that she thinks, mistakenly, she has rented for herself and Garner when he finishes his assignment in Paris. Romantic complications ensue.

This isn't much of a travelogue, unlike An American in Paris, or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or Gigi. We see little of either Paris or southern France, not even as reproduced on the back lot of a Hollywood studio. (This was not a major studio production. They probably didn't have the budget for that.) The scene inside the Louvre where Garner shoots the students standing next to - yes, right next to - the Mona Lisa may have been fantasy even then. (I don't recall being able to get that close when I was there three years later in 1971.)

What I liked about this movie - and I liked it a lot - was the comedy between Garner and Reynolds. It's adult comedy. This is a middle-aged couple who are clearly still very much in love, and very active sexually. (Contrast that with Ozzie and Harriet or Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver and you'll understand what made that so different from the tv of that era. Contrast that also with modern Hollywood movies in which, other than Harrison Ford, middle-aged people are no longer shown as having any sex drive, or are made fun of if they do.) Their attempts to have sex are constantly thwarted, however, both on the ship across the Atlantic and once they get to France, so much of the comedy, as in a classic French farce, results from the obstacles that keep them apart from what we are sure would be a great time in bed. And from the misunderstandings when each finds out about the other's pursuer.

I suppose some people might have quibbles with this or that. Paul Lynde plays his usual catty effeminate character, but it is made clear that he is interested in women after all. (It was 1968, after all, and not 1982, when Garner would appear in Victor/Victoria, which dealt with homosexuality in a relatively compassionate way.) Garner and Reynolds' characters are constantly on fire sexually, but never seem tempted by the attractive people who keep hitting on them while they are separated from each other. But even that is presented without moralistic overtones.

One of the best things about this movie is the opening, which I can't describe here without spoiling it for you. Suffice it to say that it is the perfect start to a bedroom farce, with a surprise at the end that I certainly didn't see coming but that showed right off the bat this was a movie we would need to stay sharp to enjoy.

Which I did.