Ne mangez pas les marguerites

Please Don't Eat The Daisies is an updating of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House from the woman's point of view. It's taken from a humorous book of the same title by Jean Kerr, wife of the New York Herald Tribune theater critic Walter Kerr. The Kerrs have four boys instead of two girls so we're talking about double the trouble.

Trouble the children are indeed. The film actually opens with the four boys getting their baby brother to drop water balloons on poor passersby of their Manhattan apartment. Which in itself is getting too crowded. But when the real estate agent starts showing the apartment off just as their lease is expiring, Doris Day and David Niven have to move and move quickly.

Like Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, they sink quite a bit of dollars into what we would now call a fix-it-up. But where Cary was hip deep in his involvement in the new house, David Niven is all caught up in his work as one of New York's drama critics. It's up to Doris to keep the household together and get the house livable.

Niven's got his own troubles too, he breaks a friendship with an old friend Richard Haydn when he gives producer Haydn's play a bad review. Not to mention a public slap at Sardi's from Haydn's star Janis Paige who will match her fanny with anyone's. Janis did have quite the derrière back in the day.

Haydn's really got a great scheme to get back at Niven for the bad review. It's a pip, you have to see Please Don't Eat The Daisies for.

Doris gets to sing three songs, including the title song which became a big hit for her. It's perfectly suited to her style.

She sings well and David Niven is as debonair and charming as he always is on the screen. The film even spawned a television series later on in the decade. Please Don't Eat The Daisies still holds up well as good family entertainment.

It took four sessions in front of the DVD player to get through watching PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES, about as bland a domestic comedy as I've ever watched. I'm a big Doris Day fan but this was the point in her career when she started making some family films that just didn't hit the mark.

The cast is certainly pleasant enough, but the theme of boys being boys is overdone after the first twenty minutes. David Niven has the patience of a saint to put up with the nonsense forced on him here. Neither he nor Doris are able to overcome the inadequacies of an uninspired script that turns out to be a hodge-podge of ideas left over from GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE (about a house in the country) and MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE, self-explanatory.

To her credit, Day performs with natural ease throughout and even manages to toss off the vapid title song without losing her dignity. Best in support are Janis Paige as a sexy temptress who tries to lure Niven into her clutches and Richard Haydn who seems to be preparing for his subsequent role in THE SOUND OF MUSIC as a theatrical man who knows his way around a script.

None of it is very funny, even with Patsy Kelly as a housemaid. The fluffy dog, Hobo, has a genuinely funny scene or two and there's the youngest child kept in a cage who steals a couple of scenes without even trying. But all in all, this one taxes the patience of anyone who develops a bad case of deja vu, having seen it all before.

Summing up: Has the flavor of a TV situation comedy that goes on long beyond the half-hour mark. Banal best describes the weak script. The Jean Kerr book must have been mildly amusing.

i really like this film. unlike some other reviewers i think the chemistry between niven and day is strong - they presented like a genuine married couple. the script is versatile, witty on the one hand, but also able to shift to the more dramatic. the argument between day and niven as he reveals his desire for professional success is very well done. niven himself was laugh out loud funny on many occasions, and the portrayal of parenthoood was quite charming. the song at the school doesn't do anything for me, so i tend to fast forward past that scene. however that is a matter of personal preference: i enjoy doris day as an actress much more than as a singer. it's an amusing, easy going, light hearted film, perfect for afternoon viewing.

WOW, the comments here are nastier than an open sewer!

I get that 1950s-style family comedies are perhaps a hard sell even for modern-day classic film fans, but the hate PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES gets is staggering to me. It's hardly the funniest or greatest film of all time, but I found the central relationship between Doris Day and David Niven's characters mature and realistic. There's a decided lack of dated "father knows best" stereotyping-- everyone is flawed and real-- and there's no contrived melodrama either. It's slow, sure (when you watch old movies regularly, you expect that), but I found the movie charming and relaxing.

Based on the best-selling novel by Jean Kerr, "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" is the story of a New York City family, the Mackays - four boys, a wife Kate (Doris Day) and her husband Larry (David Niven). Suddenly, Larry finds success as a powerful theater critic, and Kate wants to move out to the country, which was always their dream. However, it's not really Larry's dream any longer. He's heady on New York success and wants to be near Theater Row. Conflict comes with his changing values.

This is a nice story co-starring Spring Byington as Kate's mother and Patsy Kelly as the family housekeeper. It doesn't compare with the sparkling Doris-Rock comedies. I happen to like David Niven in the role - he's what you would expect from a New York critic - above it all, sophisticated, egotistical, well-educated but ultimately likable.

Day is very good as always and gets to sing, but the whole thing is a little too much. There aren't enough laughs to make it really funny. The brightest part of the movie for me was Janis Paige as Deborah Vaughn, an actress/singer decimated by Mackay in a review who then becomes attracted to him. She looks gorgeous, she's sexy, and she supplies the bite that the story needed more of. If the writers had built up that part of the story, the movie might have turned out better. The other part they could have built up is the awful play that Larry wrote that ends up being produced by the local community theater. Some scenes from that with Doris would have been great.

Day, as it turned out, was at her best when Ross Hunter made her over into a glamorous, sophisticated woman herself and teamed her up with Rock Hudson and gave her glossy productions and great clothes. This film was made was right at that transition. Day is a very vibrant presence but she can't elevate this material to more than what it was - a pleasant family comedy.