Do Not Disturb

There are a couple of movies in the FXM rotation that I don't think I had gotten around to seeing the previous time they were in the rotation. So now, I made a point to record the couple I hadn't seen before so that I could do reviews of them when they show up on the schedule. One such movie is Do Not Disturb. It's got a pair of airings tomorrow (June 15), at 3:05 AM and 1:15 PM.

Doris Day is the star here, as Janet Harper, an American who's having difficulty adjusting to the UK since this is before the decimalization of the currency. She's only in London because her husband Mike (Rod Taylor) is there for business. He works for an apparel company that makes woolen goods, and trades in ideas from fashion shows as well as showing off ideas of the company's own. This means he has to do a fair bit of travel, which is going to cause issues later in the movie.

But in the early stages of the movie it's purely Janet who's causing all the problems. Since they've just moved to London, they're being put up temporarily in the middle of town on the company dime, not far from the office and all the business engagements Mike is going to be involved in. Mike wants Janet to find a place not far away for the two of them to rent, but she decides to do her own thing and rent a house out in county Kent complete with housekeeper Vanessa (Hermione Baddeley). This unsurprisingly ticks Mike off, since the commute is going to be a bitch and keep him away from Janet.

Janet does other things to tick Mike off, like screw up his commute and take in a bunch of stray animals without even consulting Mike about it. She, meanwhile, is worried that he's going to forget their wedding anniversary. And she's also afraid that Mike might be having an affair with his personal assistant Claire (Maura McGiveney). Mike has to go off to Edinburgh and Paris for business meetings, and when interior decorator Paul (Sergio Fantoni) shows up, that gives Janet the idea to follow Paul to his other office in Paris without telling Mike.

As you can guess, Janet and Mike are going to find each other in Paris, and it's going to lead to more complications since Mike's more experienced colleague Simmons (Reginald Gardiner) knows that everybody at these fashion shindigs doesn't want wives along for the ride. It's sexist nonsense, and Simmons knows it, but that's just the way the culture is. (On the one hand you can argue that these men are supposed to be working, so the wives shouldn't be close at hand but seeing the sights if they're non-working women. But that of course is not the way the men mean it.) Once again you can guess that Janet is going to get the idea to pose as Claire and be at the big function in Paris, leading to a conclusion in which Mike and Janet find out that everything's been a big series of misunderstandings.

Do Not Disturb is the sort of movie Doris Day had made several times by now, especially with Rock Hudson. Now it's old hat, and worse thanks to a subpar script that writes Janet as a character who's really not that likable in the first half of the movie, even though the script expects us to think her quirks are charming. I mean, if you're posted to London for business and tell your spouse to get a flat near where you're working, aren't you going to be pissed if your spouse without telling you rents a place out in the country?

If you haven't seen any of Doris Day's romantic comedies, there are a lot that are better to start with, such as Pillow Talk. Save Do Not Disturb for later.