ecapital46

Ken is a young NYC advertising copywriter born and raised in Rochester, NY who is a hometown square "moma's boy." He is dating Pam, a free-thinking, independent, working woman Kindergarden teacher who for some reason, pretends to be a Greenwich Village 'beatnik' artist because that's what's hip and what she thinks will make her attractive to Ken. Pam wants a serious relationship, but Ken only deems her worthy of 'friends with benefits' status. Ken and Pam plan to spend an upcoming weeks' vacation together exploring NYC, but when Ken's mother calls him and pressures him to spend the vacation back home in Rochester with family, he easily capitulates and cancels his plans with Pam - whom he deems unworthy of meeting his family.

Although Ken is disrespectful to Pam and is a spineless moma's boy, Pam spends most of the program pursuing and chasing after him, as if he is some kind of prize catch - even following him uninvited to his Mom's home in Rochester to try to win he and his family over. In the end, Pam is made to admit she was lying about being a 'beatnik' and had to apologize and acquiesce to moma's boy Ken to save their relationship. Comical.

This 1960 program is one of many during the time period that to different degrees, painted unflattering portraits of the beat generation, its movement, and its critical- thinking people. Dozens of TV shows and movies of this period - Dobie Gillis, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and especially the movie 'The Subterraneans' (1960) among many others, literally lined up to take humorous pot shots, presenting 'beat' characters who were often homogeneous, superficial, idiotic, and perjoratively labeled 'counter-culture.' In "Queen of the Orange Bowl," you get such a portrait in the character, Pam, who despite her obvious superior attributes is made to disavow the beatnik life for someone half her worth. Any social movement that questions the status quo will always be attacked - coyly or not so - by the media outlets owned by the status quo. Its inevitable.

Very seldom is the remake of a film better than the original, but this film is pleasantly one of the few exceptions. First of all, it is unknown to this reviewer why this film was remade so soon. Generally, film remakes are done after a generation of time has passed (20 years), but this film was remade just 8 years after the original in 1933. In addition, the original film cast was led by a cadre of Hall of Fame performers in their own right - Myrna Loy, Alice Brady, Frank Morgan, Ann Harding, and Robert Montgomery. You'd figure with a cast this good, how is any remake going to improve on those performances? Logical question. Yet, remarkably the five leads in this remake, pound for pound, improve on each of the original performances.

After waiting to see this movie after years of reading about its critical acclaim, I found the script a bit disappointing. Here is a film that is often touted for its "ahead of its time" dealings with racial and gay subject matter, but I found nothing ahead of its time with regards to the dialogue for either subject.

Young Jo and her mother are poor white trash residents of working class England living a nomadic gypsy life together, constantly arguing and insulting each other so frequently, you wonder how and why they live together. Mom gets behind in the rent and they duck out on the landlord first opportunity, wandering to wherever Mom finds her next male friend. Young Jo eventually meets a young good-looking black Merchant sailor who has stable employment and seems to have more on the ball than both Jo or her Mom. They develop a romance over a few days - not a "one night stand" - as descriptions often state. They profess their love for each other and the sailor gives Jo a friendship ring. The sailor departs when his ship sails on a scheduled trip, but at their meeting on the pier before it departs, he asks her to remember him and promises to return.

In his absence, her loneliness returns until she meets up with Geoffrey, a gay male who eventually moves in with her and her mother. Jo later discovers she is pregnant with the sailor's child, then inexplicably asks Geoffrey to serves as the father of the sailor's child. He agrees. Apparently, Jo has evaluated the prospects of raising a mixed race child in Britain along with maybe assessing her own personal prejudices about maintaining a lifelong relationship with its father, and decided she will be better off cutting all ties with the child's father. Strangely, this decision is made with no consultation or consideration for the father who by every indication in the film, planned to return to her when his ship completed its voyage (he is from Liverpool). Unfortunately for Jo, as the constant family bickering continues, both her mother (who marries her latest beau and moves into his house) and Geoffrey both leave her in a lurch, pregnant and alone, and she is left to contemplate her future.

What's comical in the film is that Jo and her mother have all the characteristics of white trash demographic, yet Jo frequently refers to the neighborhood kids as "filthy" and "dirty" as if she was somehow better and both her and her mother seem to look at the child's father as sufficient for a night of sex and comfort, but unworthy as a life partner. This is more an indictment of the attitudes of these two women and general British society rather than any deficiency of the child's father. The film is silent on with whom the fault lies, and the viewer is left to decide whether the fault lies in the stars or in Jo herself.

For those who associate the movie with the song of the same name, two things: (1) The song is not part of the soundtrack and apparently was written - as many songs have been over the years - to both benefit from and serve as a promotion vehicle for the film. (2) We often expect a movie that has a great song title to measure up to the popularity and quality of the song, such as 1944's "Laura," where both song and movie are equal and eternal classics. That doesn't happen here. The movie comes up short comparatively speaking vis a vis the well known and exceedingly popular song written by composer Bobby Scott.