Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Story by Gwen Davis
Screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green
Stars: Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly, Robert Cummings, and Dick Van Dyke
My go to film review channel recently reviewed this movie recently. I heard that there were fabulous gowns and good looking men. It has that, but the basic story is severely lacking.
Louise (MacLaine) is a woman that thinks she is a witch, cursed with having her husbands die. She recounts this to her therapist Dr. Stephanson (Cummings). That's it. That is the whole plot.
The biggest problem with the movie is that the story is the same thing. She meets a guy, marries him, the guy becomes a workaholic and dies. Rinse and repeat. You are over it before the movie is halfway done. There is also an issue with the pacing. The pacing is so slow that you have to put the film in 1.5x speed to make it tolerable.
It seems the screenwriters were trying to make a satire about American life during the 60s, skewer Hollywood tropes and a woman role in a marriage. It failed to do that. Maybe it tried to be a spoof movie, but you never knew what tone it has.
The only reason to see this movie is the costumes designed by Edith Head. Holy shit. The costumes were everything. If the movie didn't have the fabulous gowns, headdresses and martini glass beds than the movie was be unwatchable.
Rating: 6/10
