Your annual Father's Day reminder

Tomorrow is the third Sunday in June, which means that in the US and a lot of other countries it's Father's Day. Since TCM is of course an American channel, it's no surprise that their programming aligns with the US scheduling of the observance. Apparently, a fair number of Catholic countries use March 19, the feast day of St. Joseph, to mark the occasion since as the husband of Mary he's the Catholic patron saint of fathers.

In any case, there's a relatively limited set of Father's Day movies TCM can run, and once again the day's lineup is interrupted by the second airing of Noir Alley since there aren't all that many noir films with fatherhood as a them. Moms at least get Mildred Pierce. Tomorrow's lineup is:

6:00 AM Our Vines Have Tender Grapes
8:00 AM East of Eden
10:00 AM The Man I Love (Noir Alley re-air)
Noon Love Story (OK, I guess there's a complicated father-son relationship here)
1:45 PM Judge Hardy and Son (There are actually a bunch of Hardy Family movies they could have picked)
3:30 PM The Courtship of Eddie's Father
5:45 PM Life With Father
8:00 PM Father of the Bride (1950; the Spencer Tracy version)
9:45 PM To Kill a Mockingbird

Now, I put the whole Father's Day schedule down here because I was curious to see how many of the movies are repeats of last year, seeing how I have TCM schedules going back quite a few years. So, let's go back in time to those thrilling days of 2025 and see what TCM was doing:

6:15 AM The Entertainer (another difficult father-children relationship)
8:00 AM Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (ooh, there's the first repeat)
10:00 AM Crack-Up (another Noir Alley re-air)
Noon Midnight (I'm assuming this was part of some noon on Sunday programming feature the way we get the Musical Matinee at noon on Saturday)
1:45 PM Judge Hardy and Son (a repeat, and at the same time!)
3:30 PM The Courtship of Eddie's Father (LOL)
5:45 PM East of Eden (better at dinner; I remember when TCM's morning intro was "Look for the Silver Lining", which doesn't quite go with a movie like East of Eden)
8:00 PM Father of the Bride (and once again, the Spencer Tracy version)
9:45 PM Life With Father (you knew it was coming)
Midnight The Kid (unlike this year, Silent Sunday Nights included a movie with a father-son relationshp

So, no surprise at how much there was in common. But if anybody at TCM is reading this: pick a different Hardy Family movie next year.

Kissing Time

Back in 2013, I briefly mentioned a night of Busby Berkeley movies and the shorts that aired in between. One that got about a line was Kissing Time, which got no further mention because I had never seen it before. Eventually, it got another TCM showing as part of the Saturday matinee block and, not remembering having brought it up 13 years ago, I recorded it.

Jane Froman is the female lead here, and as I mentioned back in 2013 she's famous for having survived a plane crash in 1943 that was the subject of the biopic With a Song in My Heart starring Susan Hayward as Froman. She plays Miss Sullivan, traveling in an unnamed Latin American country with her father and having met some guy named Ferdie on what is the local festival day, leading the locals to do a song and dance number.

Showing up is an army lieutenant Segovia (Georges Metaxa) togethr with "El Toro" (Don Zelaya), who is the dictator of the country. They're driving a car which was manufactured by the Sullivan company, of which Dad is an executive. When the car breaks down, they think Mr. Sullivan can fix it, not realizing he's only an executive and not a mechanic. But it's an excuse to detain the Sullivans to try to get Dad to service the car.

Lt. Segovia meets Miss Sullivan and immediately falls in love with her as they sing a couple of songs to each other. And then El Toro shows up and sees Segovia singing, and is ticked because he's got a thing for Miss Sullivan and, as dictator, naturally believes that what he says goes so he should be the one to wind up with Miss Sullivan. Screw what she thinks. In any case, El Toro plan to have Lt. Segovia executed.

What you think of Kissing Time is going to depend largely on what you think of the type of music that is being performed in it. The short is from 1933, so the musical stylings are going to be extremely dated to a lot of people. And, I have to admit, this isn't my favorite type of arrangement. That having been said, the stars here do have talent, and for people who like to see the sort of stuff that audiences of the day considered entertaining above and beyond the prestige movies, Kissing Time is a good example.

The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss

One of those movies that fell into the public domain such that I firstl learned about it by seeing it show up as a DVD for purchase on sites specialising in public domain stuff is The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss. (It was released in the US under the title The Amazing Adventure.) Some time back I found that it had made its way to one of the FAST platforms, so I decided I'd finally give it a try.

Cary Grant plays Ernest Bliss, one of those men who seems to have inherited a bunch of money and who is able to live off that wealth as a result, not that he'd have known World War II would be coming along to destroy the wealth and way of life of people like him. In any case Bliss, despite having a wonderful apartment, finds that he's just not satisfied with life, something that's understandable considering he doesn't have any sense of purpose. After talking to his friend Lord Honiton, Bliss goes to see doctor to the wealthy Sir James Alroyd, who coes up with the wacky diagnosis that Ernest is suffering from affluence, which sounds like something a scammer would say to get wealthy people to part with their money.

Ernest, for his part, doesn't like Alroyd's suggestion, so tells him that he could make it on his own without that wealth. To that end, he makes a wager with Sir James, to the tune of £50,000. Bliss says he can survive for a year being staked to a measly £5, not using any of his wealth in any way that might benefit him personally. If he fails the bet, Alroyd's clinic will get the £50,000.

Ernest has no difficulty getting an attic room to let, but getting a good job that will allow him to pay the rent and survive is rather more difficult. Eventually, he gets work as a door-to-door salesman selling kitchen stoves, but the work is based on commission and Bliss doesn't seem able to make any sales. That is, until he comes up with a brilliant idea for a promotion, but one that's going to cost £500. He can use his own money for it, but that would cause him to lose the bet. Except that since the wager called for him not to use the money for his own benefit, he figures if he quits the job immediately after the promotion works, it can't be seen as using the money for his own benefit. Also working for the company, as the boss' secretary, is Frances Clayton (Mary Brian). She and Ernest become friends, and she too leaves the company because her boss is trying to pressure her into marrying him.

Bliss gets a job as a chauffeur for the 1930s British equivalent of a limousine service, and finds that one of the assignments he gets is actually to his own old apartment that he's left his valet in charge of. His valet rather stupidly decided to wager a bunch of money on dog racing, such that he's been blackmailed into letting the people who lent him the money live in Bliss' apartment. They've been thinking of forging Bliss' signature to get money out of his bank accounts, so when they see a chauffer who looks like Bliss they see a great chance for their scheme to work.

Bliss is able to foil this, but we're still not at the one year mark, and the requisite happy ending that a movie like this is bound to have. How we get there, you're going to have to watch for yourself.

The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss was originally released in Britain in 1936 with a running time of about 80 minutes. But when it was released in the US, it was edited down to about 62 minutes. It's that edit that TubiTV has, along with all of the public domain sites. (Supposedly the BFI has a 77-minute version.) The result of getting and edit but by almost a quarter is that it really does feel like something is missing from the movie.

In any case, Cary Grant does a professional job on a movie that would be more or less a programmer. It's not great by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also certainly not bad, and would have fit the bill of entertaining audiences of the day while keeping Cary Grant in the spotlight with another film.

Fun if not macabre

Another movie that's been sitting on my DVR for a while is the early William Castle horror effort Macabre. This is the one that had Castle show up to the premiere in a coffin and offer insurance policies to anyone against dying of fright during the movie. Well, the movie isn't exactly that frightening, but it's fun for what it is.

William Prince stars as Rodney Barrett, a doctor in a small California town who doesn't have a particularly good life. Some years back his wife Alice died in childbirth (the child, a daughter named Marge, survived), and the gossip around town has been that the not-so-good doctor probably could have done something to prevent it rather than getting good and drunk. Alice was the daughter of the town's banker, Jode Wetherby (Philip Tonge), but the child lives with the doctor who has a nanny Miss Kushins (Ellen Corby). About the one other person who supports the doctor is his assistant Polly (Jacqueline Scott).

Well, there is one other person, Sylvia Stevenson (Susan Morrow), whom Dr. Barrett is planning to marry and make her Marge's stepmother. Again, however, the gossip around town is that Barrett was having an affair with Sylvia before Alice died, which might explain as well why the town doesn't much care for him. And if that's not bad enough, things are about to get a whole lot worse for Dr. Barrett.

Barrett returns home where in theory Miss Kushins is supposed to be looking after Marge. But Marge isn't there. And then the phone rings, and Polly answers it. She hears a strange voice telling her not only that Marge has been kidnapped, but that the caller has already held a funeral for Marge! That might also fit with the fact that the local undertaker Quigley has called the police chief Tyloe (Jim Backus, decidedly playing against type here) to report that a child-sized coffin has been stolen from his funeral parlor!

Now, since the call says a funeral has already been held, Dr. Barrett suggests that she must have been buried at the cemetery, leading him and Polly to head off there. He also tells Kushins not to say anything to Jode, since Jode has a notoriously bad heart and the information might trigger a heart attack. Naturally, the first thing Kushins does when she's alone is go right over to the Wetherby place. Add in a blind sister-in-law who carries on wanton relationships with various men in the town, and it all leads up to a climax in the cemetery where everything is explained to some level of viewer satisfaction.

William Castle was obviously a good promoter, as Macabre was a commercial success. That having been said, being such a low budget movie it's not exactly good. There's more smoke than fire here, with mostly subpar acting. There's also a scene in the climax at the cemetery that made me think of Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent. William Castle certainly had ideas, even if he couldn't always translate them into truly good movies.

Still, Macabre is thoroughly entertaining because of how off it is, and how frankly silly the payoff is once we get to it, which is thankfully not that long since the movie only runs 71 minutes. It's definitely worth your time.

Dated "edgy" 1960s comedy #95258672804678437580276

When Ted Turner bought the rights to the films that became the so-called "Turner Library" that formed the backbone of the programming in the early days of TCM, I think the Warner Bros. movies only went through about 1950; in any case the 1950s and 1960s Warner Bros. stuff always seemed to show up rather less frequently. That's been changing in recent years, giving me the chance to catch a lot of new-to-me stuff. One such movie was the 1966 sex comedy Any Wednesday.

Jane Fonda stars as Ellen Gordon, who lives in a Lower East Side ground floor apartment with a couple of friends. She works at an art gallery, in charge of some rented artworks at a swanky party. There, she's impressed into service by John Cleves (Jason Robards). He's just called his wife, and for reasons that will soon become obvious needs to make it sound as though he's calling from out of town, which is why Ellen has to play the part of the long-distance operator. (Nowadays, of course, John would just call his wife on the cell phone and caller ID would identify the number regardless of where in America John was calling from.)

As it turns out, John is stepping out on his wife Dorothy (Rosemary Clooney), claiming to be on business trips while he really stays in New York every Wednesday evening for his assignations. He immediately falls for Ellen, who is smart enough to say hell no to John's ideas. But circumstances change for her as she gets appendicitis, while both of her roommates move out because the apartment building is turning to co-ops and none of them can afford the price of the new co-op.

This gives John his in. He'll buy the co-op for Ellen, or at least have the conglomerate he runs buy it so that he can claim it's an "executive suite" and get a tax write-off. Ellen can live there, and John can visit every Wednesday evening for those assignations with nobody being any the wiser. Except, of course, that this arrangement is going to be found out eventually, or else we wouldn't have much of a movie.

That discovery is courtesy of John's secretary Miss Linsley (Ann Prentiss long before she screwed up her life). A man with whom John is doing a business deal, Cass Henderson (Dean Jones), is coming in to town and can't get a hotel room. So Miss Linsley helpfully offers Cass the executive suite, since logically it should be used for things like this. But we all know that there's a woman there, and boy isn't everybody going to be surprised when Cass shows up and finds Ellen. He gets the not-quite-right idea about what Ellen is, since he has no way of knowing that Ellen lived there before John turned the place into the executive suite.

And, as you can also guess, Dorothy is going to find out about the suite and walk in on Cass, Ellen, and John. So Cass and Ellen have to play the part of a married couple to keep the ruse going. Dorothy, meanwhile, hears Ellen's voice and knows she can recognize it from somewhere, although not yet from the fake telephone operator. All sorts of complications are going to ensue before the film reaches an ending that may or may not be happy for each of the characters.

Any Wednesday is based on a Broadway play, and it's again the sort of material that I can kind of see being popular with the self-styled urbane theater-goers of the mid-1960s. On the big screen, however, it's fairly stagey, and 60 years on it's decidedly dated. It also doesn't help that Jason Robards is playing a sort of character I don't much care for, that being the man who lies his way through everything, with the lies having to get bigger and bigger to maintain the ruse.

People who like this sort of look at New York City as it was in the 1960s may enjoy Any Wednesday, but I was glad to see the end of it.

Hawaii

The latest in the series of movies that I had sitting on my DVR and is getting another airing on TCM: Hawaii, based on part of the sprawling novel of the same title by James Michener. Hawaii will be on TCM early tomorrow morning, or overnight tonight depending on your time zone, TCM feed, and perspective, at 2:00 AM.

I mentioned above that Hawaii was based on part of Michener's novel; as you may recall, a few years later there was another movie titled The Hawaiians that was based on a later section of the novel. Now here, I need to point out that I got something wrong in my synopsis of The Hawaiians, which was the suggestion that the Hoxworths were the main characters of the movie. They may have been the main characters of the novel, which I'll admit I haven't read, but in this movie the main character is Rev. Abner Hale (Max von Sydow). He's a very proper New England Protestant minister fresh out of Yale's divinity school.

As Hale starts off on his career in the pulpit, it's around 1820, so a few generations after Capt. Cook became the first European to discover those islands that make up Hawaii, and the fact that there are Polynesians living there. For both economic and religious reasons, a lot of people had interest in the land, and Hale's superiors in the missionary society want to convert the native Hawaiians to Christianity. However, they also have a rule that the men of the cloth they're sending out to heathen lands have to be married already, which Abner isn't, so they have to find him a wife.

A good choice would be Jerusha Bromley (Julie Andrews). She comes from reasonably good New England stock too, and had/has a boyfriend in a whaling captain, Rafer Hoxworth (Richard Harris). Marriage to a whaling captain might not be the best thing, and besides, he's been away for a long time to the extent that who knows when he's coming back? (Obviously, we know that he will show up later in the movie.) So getting Jerusha married off to Abner and sending her to Hawaii seems like a good idea for the rest of the family.

After a suitably arudous journey, since there was no Panama Canal in the 1820s and no roads all the way across the US to the Pacific, the Hales arrive on Maui to find a bunch of Polynesians who seem reasonably happy with their way of life under the queen (Ali'i Nui), Malama Kanakoa (Jocelyne LaGarde). But their way of life shocks Rev. Hale, notably the way that the royal family has to resort to incest to keep unwanted influence out of the royal bloodline considering the relatively small population. Couldn't they get someone from another island? After all, they were well aware of the existence of the rest of the islands in the archipelago.

Rev. Hale wants the locals to ban incest for well-intentioned reasons, since it was clear to Europeans that inbred royalty produced health issues even if they too were still decades away from understanding genetics. The native Hawaiians are realtively OK living alongside these white people, and do develop some sympathy for Hale because, despite his rigid Christianity, he and especially Jerusha are attempting to be kind.

But all sorts of problems afflict the people of Maui thanks especially to less-enlightend whites encroaching on them from the other islands. Hoxworth shows up again, none too pleased to find Jerusha married to another man. The Hales, and Malama, are also displeased with the sailors taking a liking to the native women; this wasn't all that long after the Bounty mutiny, after all. So the natives and Hales form an alliance resulting in a deathbed conversion of convenience from Malama, but all of this only leads to more disaster.

Eventually, the missionary society and other whites decide that just as important as conversion is the economic gains the bounty of the islands could bring them. Since they see Abner as too enlightened, they want to get him off the island by making him take up a position at a church back in New England. Hale isn't so sure.

One of the reviews I read of the movie version of Hawaii is that it's the sort of material that probably would have worked better as a TV miniseries, and I have to say I can't disagree with that. The print that TCM ran runs 161 minutes, and feels every bit of that as it's exceedingly slow at times, not that there was much to change the rhythm of the islands before the white man showed up. The cinematography, mostly on location, is unsurprisingly gorgeous; the acting is adequate; but, the story is the weak point here.

Stolen Holiday

I think I mentioned a while back having a string of Kay Francis movies that I hadn't seen before on my DVR, and writing up posts on them and leaving them in draft to space out when the posts show up here. The next of the Kay Francis movies is from her later years at Warner Bros. after Bette Davis started taking over the role of queen of the Warner Bros. lot: Stolen Holiday.

Francis stars as Nicole Picot, an American model who has made her way over to Paris in 1931, and is successful showing off the clothes others pay her to wear, although she'd really rather own her own business, confiding in her friend Suzanne (Alison Skipworth). One day at work, Nicole is approached by Russian émigré Stefan Orloff (Claude Rains), who is willing to put up Nicole at a fashionable mansion for a night in exchange for posing as his wife. Nicole agrees for the money, and although she quickly discovers the ruse, she remains friends with Orloff.

The thing is, Stefan needed to look fashionable because he's running a chain of pawn shops with some of his friends, on the grounds that France is the only country where one can issue bonds on the assets of what's been pawned. Stefan is the head of this scheme, although it's not quite honest, and it's his partners who seem to be taking more of a risk as their names are the ones on the documentation. But Nicole doesn't know any of this. She gets the money she needs to open the Maison Picot, which eventually becomes successfull.

When it looks like Orloff might be in trouble and it's suggested Picot get out of town until the thing blows over -- after all, Orloff doesn't really want to hurt Picot -- she goes to Geneva, which is where she meets Anthony Wayne (Ian Hunter). Wayne is a British diplomat who can travel wherever on his diplomatic passport. He immediately falls in love with Nicole, and the two become platonic friends much in the same way that Picot is friends with Orloff. In fact, it's that friendship with Orloff that leads Picot to decide she's not going to marry Wayne.

Meanwhile, the walls are beginning to close in on Orloff again, so he asks Picot to marry him! He's got ulterior motives. If he can invite all the people he's scamming to the wedding, who are basically the highest of high society, they won't be able to turn on him for fear of the public scandal they'll have to face when the fiscal chicanery comes to light. Or at least that's the theory. One of Orloff's business partners is taken away from the wedding by the police for questioning, which really begins to put the heat on Orloff and lead to the finale.

Stolen Holiday is little more than a programmer from Warner Bros., although unsurprisingly they do a good job making it look like a million bucks. The plot, however, is a bit of a mess. Then again, this is the sort of material where everything looks so glossy that you won't really notice how little the plot resembles any sort of reality. Claude Rains is as pleasant to listen too as always; Kay Francis looks good in all those fashions; and everybody should have listened to Alison Skipworth's advice.

Briefs for June 14

Today is my birthday, a fact I think I've mentioned here in the past. It's also the birth anniversary of a couple of noteworthy Hollywood stars, which was also the subject of one of my brief post back in 2012: Oscar-winner Burl Ives was born on this day in 1909, while Dorothy McGuire was born in 1916. Marla Gibbs, who is remembered for her TV work, is still alive at 95; while Boy George, who sang the theme song to The Crying Game, is 65.

As for obituaries, I should mention the passing of Gene Shalit, 2½ months past his 100th birthday. Shalit was the long time movie critic on the Today show here in the States, which I think is how most people in America would remember him. Well, that and the moustache.

I've also stated a few times over the past couple of months that it seems as though, since the start of 2026, FXM's Retro block has has more movies in it, although of course most of them are things I've blogged about before. I think it's been a while since I've mentioned Two for the Road, which comes up tomorrow at 10:00 AM.

A sign of the times, for me at least, is how much of the time any more when Jeopardy! has a movie-related category, everything is way too recent because nobody cares much about the past. On Thursday, for example, there was a "Movie Musicals" category, and the earliest movie in the category -- and the only one from the 20th century -- was Grease.

On the other hand, on Friday, one of the contestants mentioned doing a weekly movie night that's run to several hundred movies now. When Ken Jennings asked him to recommend something we'd be likely not to know, he selected Don't Think I've Forgotten. I'd agree with the guy that the movie is definitely obscure, although surprisingly enough it's one that I've blogged about despite how relatively recent it is.

It Happened in Brooklyn

I didn't expect to do posts on multiple Peter Lawford pictures in brief succession, but it turned out that two of them were on my DVR as well as being on the TCM schedule. The second of them is It Happened in Brooklyn, which TCM is running again tomorrow, June 15, at 9:30 AM.

Peter Lawford is technically in a secondary role to Frank Sinatra. Sinatra plays Danny Miller, a Brooklyn-born man who as the movie starts is in England just after the end of World War II waiting to be demobbed and sent back to America along with a bunch of other soldiers. A conceit of the movie is that Brooklyn is full of very outgoing people but, in England, Danny just doesn't want to associate with anybody other than a pretty nurse (Gloria Grahame) tending to him. He's at a party for the soldiers about to go home, and is ordered to mingle. It's there that he meets Jamie Shellgrove (Peter Lawford), who might be even more timid than Danny but who happens to be the grandson of a duke. Danny suggests that Jamie come over to Brooklyn.

Danny gets demobbed, just in time for a housing crisis in Brooklyn, which basically forces him to room with an old friend, school custodian Nick Lombardi (Jimmy Durante) who has an apartment attached to the school where he works. Teaching at the school is music teacher Anne Fielding (Kathryn Grayson). Anne had wanted to be an opera singer, but she didn't get to study which is why she's in a backwater like this. One of the students is a piano prodigy, but he comes from a poor family, and he can't apply for the big music scholarship because he's a couple of months too young, which is going to be one of the plot points later in the movie.

Danny, having returned from the war, has the right to his old job back, reminiscent of Dana Andrews in The Best Years of Our Lives, but he naturally dreams of something better. He was working as a shipping clerk for a music store, when what he really dreams of doing is putting over the songs by singing them, the sort of job that seems more out of the 1910s than the 1940s, but whatever. He's actually able to get that job thanks to a little help from Nick that teaches Danny to be not quite so shy. Also, by this point, you expect Danny and Anne to wind up together in the final reel.

But then Jamie shows up from England since the Duke really wants Danny to help Jamie become successful enough that he'll overcome his timidness and be able to make it back in England. Jamie falls for Anne, and as it turns out she really likes him too, thanks in part to Danny's playing a bit of matchmaker. But Jamie is just too damn shy to tell Anne how he really feels, which is going to cause all sorts of conflict in the final act of the movie. This last act also involves the main characters teaming up to get a piano concert for that young prodigy in the hopes that they can get someone important to attend the concert and give the kid that scholarship.

It Happened in Brooklyn is one of those movies that doesn't really have any bad guys in it, although there is some conflict along the way. However, that's one of the things that doesn't quite work in the movie's favor here. Indeed, it feels like It Happened in Brooklyn is a bit of a mish-mash of plots that might have been lying around the MGM studio offices. (It's not related, but the characters pass movie theaters on a couple of occasions and there are a lot of MGM movies from the era being advertised on posters.) It's also a musical with a plot that doesn't really lend itself to being a musical even with two of the main characters working in music. Kathryn Grayson has an operatic number from Leo Delibes' Lakmé toward the end of the film that brings things to a screeching halt.

Somewhat surprisingly, even though I'm not a fan of Peter Lawford, he isn't the sort of weak link here that he was in some of his other movies. I think that's because the screenplay plays to his limitations as an actor by having him play a totally uncharismatic character. You wonder how much actual acting he had to do.

I suppose I could save this for June 13, 2027

Next up on the list of movies that are currently on my DVR and getting another airing on TCM is Same Time, Next Year. This one will show up on TCM tomorrow, June 14, at 2:00 PM.

The movie opens up in early 1951. George (Alan Alda) is dining alone in what looks like one of those restaurants attached to an inn. Also there dining alone is young housewife Doris (Ellen Burstyn). They, seeming to be the only two people in the place apart from the help, start talking to each other, and the next thing you know, it's the following morning. The two are in bed together, with George clearly naked since the camera strategically pans to show him putting on his boxer shorts, implying that the two had sex.

Now, in theory, that's not the biggest deal, as people do have one night stands. Except that in this case the two are married... but to other people. (The script doesn't really explain why either of the two is here alone, although later in the movie Doris talks about going on retreats. This would at least explain later events in the film but not the opening act.) In any case, neither of the two has any real interest in getting a divorce, so the two decide that they'll both make arrangements to come back in a year's time.

Maybe they did come back the following year, but the film uses a montage of current-events photos to show what was going on between that visit in 1951, and the next one shown on screen, which is in 1956. The film shows four further visits, in 1961, 1966, 1972, and 1977. Along the way, each of the two goes through the various ups and downs of life, while at the same time being swept up in the various current events going on around them. George goes into analysis, while the Vietnam War clearly has a bigger effect on both of them. There's even the possibility of one or another of the spouses (never actually seen) finding out that something's going on.

Beyond that, there's not a lot of plot to Same Time, Next Year as it's pretty much a two-character play turned into a movie, with a lot of talk and not very much action. Whether or not you're going to like this one depends a lot on the two stars. Ellen Burstyn does a good job, while I personally think that Alan Alda is clearly the weaker partner here. There's also the issue that there's really nothing that can be done to open this one up from its stage origins, since part of the point of the meetings is that they meet in a secluded place so as not to be seen together.

As I watched Same Time, Next Year, I found myself thinking of the film 84 Charing Cross Road which is much better precisely because it doesn't have to deal with the limitations that Same Time, Next Year does. It can introduce all the other people in the two main characters' lives, as well as opening up the action, which takes place in two cities anyway. Same Time, Next Year isn't bad, but it's also another of those films which clearly isn't going to be for everyone.