Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 1, 2020 20:36:15 GMT -8
The Facts of Life
This 1960 movie stars Bob Hope and Lucille Ball as part of a group of married friends who decide to vacation together. Larry Gilbert (Hope) is married to Mary (Ruth Hussey). Kitty Weaver (Ball) is married to Jack (Don DeFore).
At the last minute, both Jack and Mary have to delay their trip but insist that their spouses go on ahead. They’ll be there in a couple days. So Larry (Hope) and Kitty (Ball) spend several days together.
They are naturally antagonistic toward each other. Finally, while out fishing, they decide on a truce. If he’ll quit telling jokes she’ll stop trying to laugh at things that aren’t funny. And so they begin to get on a bit.
Well, this is a romantic comedy after all and you might guess that Larry and Kitty get on a little better than they had ever imagined.
I admit that I detest screwball comedies. Hell would be having to watch Some Like it Hot over and over and over again. As much as I admire Cary Grant for much of his work, I detest most of his screwball comedies. As much as I admire much of Katharine Hepburn’s work, I detest all of her screwball comedies.
That’s not to confuse “screwball” with “quirky.” And there are some screwball comedies (very few) that I like such as Road to Morocco.
The Facts of Life shows that had they put more effort into the various “screwball” comedies, they might not have relied on dumbness and dialogue that basically bludgeons you over the head (laugh, dammit!). Good stories and dialogue are necessary as a framework. Any movie with “Hope and Ball” in the credits is going to be assumed to be a mindless, icepick-in-the-ear, grating screwball comedy.
But this one is different. Hope is still Hope. There’s not much depth there to his character, but he does have his moments. Lucille Ball made an enormous amount of money doing screwball comedy (including I Love Lucy). But this movie shows what a wasted talent she was. Or maybe I just need to check out a few more of her older movies.
She can act, she can be funny, and she can be serious as well. This is a comedy (and totally G-rated…which is refreshing unto itseld), and I wouldn’t expect much depth. But perhaps the lower expectation made the depth that was there all the more meaningful. Hope and Ball have a romance and we explore, in a delicate (and often funny) way, what this means to two people.
Melvin Frank (director and writer) and Norman Panama (writer) put together a gem. Only just a nudge (perhaps boredom with the subject) could have pushed this into the mindless realm of “screwball comedy.” But they put much more into it than that. It surprised the hell out of me that I liked it this much.
And there are plenty of laugh-out-loud gag moments. Hope is good as the more comic part of this paring.
This 1960 movie stars Bob Hope and Lucille Ball as part of a group of married friends who decide to vacation together. Larry Gilbert (Hope) is married to Mary (Ruth Hussey). Kitty Weaver (Ball) is married to Jack (Don DeFore).
At the last minute, both Jack and Mary have to delay their trip but insist that their spouses go on ahead. They’ll be there in a couple days. So Larry (Hope) and Kitty (Ball) spend several days together.
They are naturally antagonistic toward each other. Finally, while out fishing, they decide on a truce. If he’ll quit telling jokes she’ll stop trying to laugh at things that aren’t funny. And so they begin to get on a bit.
Well, this is a romantic comedy after all and you might guess that Larry and Kitty get on a little better than they had ever imagined.
I admit that I detest screwball comedies. Hell would be having to watch Some Like it Hot over and over and over again. As much as I admire Cary Grant for much of his work, I detest most of his screwball comedies. As much as I admire much of Katharine Hepburn’s work, I detest all of her screwball comedies.
That’s not to confuse “screwball” with “quirky.” And there are some screwball comedies (very few) that I like such as Road to Morocco.
The Facts of Life shows that had they put more effort into the various “screwball” comedies, they might not have relied on dumbness and dialogue that basically bludgeons you over the head (laugh, dammit!). Good stories and dialogue are necessary as a framework. Any movie with “Hope and Ball” in the credits is going to be assumed to be a mindless, icepick-in-the-ear, grating screwball comedy.
But this one is different. Hope is still Hope. There’s not much depth there to his character, but he does have his moments. Lucille Ball made an enormous amount of money doing screwball comedy (including I Love Lucy). But this movie shows what a wasted talent she was. Or maybe I just need to check out a few more of her older movies.
She can act, she can be funny, and she can be serious as well. This is a comedy (and totally G-rated…which is refreshing unto itseld), and I wouldn’t expect much depth. But perhaps the lower expectation made the depth that was there all the more meaningful. Hope and Ball have a romance and we explore, in a delicate (and often funny) way, what this means to two people.
Melvin Frank (director and writer) and Norman Panama (writer) put together a gem. Only just a nudge (perhaps boredom with the subject) could have pushed this into the mindless realm of “screwball comedy.” But they put much more into it than that. It surprised the hell out of me that I liked it this much.
And there are plenty of laugh-out-loud gag moments. Hope is good as the more comic part of this paring.