I didn't intend to do posts on two of what I refer to as the 1960s "generation gap" movies in fairly close succession, after last week's post on Don't Make Waves. I also didn't intend to do posts on two Debbie Reynolds movies a few weeks apart, after I Love Melvin. But it turns out there's a movie on my DVR that's showing up on TCM tomorrow, April 7, that relates to both of those films. That movie is How Sweet It Is! at 8:00 AM as part of a birthdy salute to actor James Garner.
After wannabe groovy opening titles and one of those awful 1960s MOR songs, the action shifts to a bedroom in an upper-middle-class suburban house in New Rochelle, NY, where a man and a woman are in bed together making mad passionate love -- or least as mad and passionate as you could get on screen in 1968 -- in the middle of the day. The woman, Jenny Henderson (Debbie Reynolds), is worried about Davey (Donald Losby) returning home from work and catching the two in bed together. Davey does show up, but in a twist it turns out that Davey is Jenny's teenaged son, and the man in bed is Grif Henderson (James Garner), who is Jenny's wife and Davey's father.
Grif is a photojournalist, and the magazine he works for sends him on foreign assignments often enough that he doesn't get to see Jenny so often. Worse is that he doesn't get to see Davey, which worries Mom since she knows Davey needs a father figure. So when Grif goes to have a father/son chat, he learns that Davey is dating Bootsie (Hilary Thompson), the daughter of Grif's boss at the magazine. Bootsie is going to be spending the summer on one of those guided student tours of Europe, and Davey wants to use the money from his job to go over to Europe and follow Bootsie around. Dad kind of likes the idea -- it's a good way to learn about girls -- but Mom isn't so certain.
So what Jenny's Mom does is get Bootsie's mom to put pressure on Bootsie's dad. He, as the editor of the magazine, is planning to send a photographer along to document the trip for the magazine -- American student life on the European grand tour or some such. Perhaps it can be arranged so that Grif is the photographer, and Davey his assistant, so Dad can watch to see that Davey doesn't get into too much hijinks. Jenny, for her part, will rent a house on the Riviera for the family to stay in after the tour.
Except that Jenny is a bit naïve and gets taken in by an obvious con artist (Terry-Thomas in a brief role) and the transatlantic voyage offers no prospects of rekindling the romance. When everybody gets to France, Jenny goes south to the house they've rented for the summer, only to find out that the owner, Philippe Maspere (Maurice Ronet), a prominent lawyer, is living there as his summer house. But since there's no place else for Jenny to go and he's obviously attracted to her, he lets her rent the place for the second half of what she was going to pay the agent.
The standard love triangle hijinks ensue, with Philippe kinda-sorta pursuing Jenny, who for her part seems flattered although she really does love Grif. Grif, meanwhile, is being pursued by the guide Nancy, who is thrilled to have an adult male with her after having to spend so much time with teenagers. One coincidence leads to another, and the movie climaxes with Grif and Jenny getting arrested; Jenny getting bailed out by a bordello owner (she's in a holding pen with the owner's stable of prostitutes); and Grif and Davey showing up at the bordello.
From what I've read, James Garner hated How Sweet It Is!, although he enjoyed the people he worked with on the movie. I can't say I disagree with him. The premise, beyond a middle-aged couple still having a sex drive but mostly unable by circumstance to act upon it, is forced, and the budget doesn't even allow for the sort of establishing shots or location shooting other "Hollywood goes to Europe" movies of the era had. Worse, a lot of the movie feels like it's trying to appeal to a younger crowd but failing badly. The movie also has any number of plot holes. The ocean voyage wouldn't give a husband and wife a cabin together? The teenagers' given ages are also much too young.
If you want to watch another example of Hollywood's difficulty in adjusting to changing social values in the 1960s, How Sweet It Is! fits the bill. But it's not a particuarly good movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment