Marriage on the Rocks (1965)

This film intends to be wacky, I think, but ends up being nothing more than annoying. Where is the comedy in this comedy? Comedies should be fun. This one saunters through some boring situations, with lackluster performances, and expects laughs, apparently.Frank Sinatra plays the role of the married man, firmly entrenched in responsibility, with a family that doesn't appreciate him. He goes through the motions, except when it comes to his job.Dean Martin is best friend and bachelor--another cliché of the mid-sixties. He is constantly juggling the attentions of sexy women, providing a stark contrast to his "square" buddy, Frank.Deborah Kerr's talents are wasted as Frank's wife--feeling unfulfilled and starved for attention.The entire story revolves around a reversal that is as unfunny as it is improbable--Dean mistakenly marries Deborah. Oh, what will they do? How can they possibly extricate themselves from this situation that is filled with life lessons and comic banter?I cannot recommend this film to anyone. It is mirthless.

Complications arise after an unhappily married couple are "accidentally" divorced whilst on their second honeymoon in this amiable comedy with echoes of Hitchcock's 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith'. The film takes quite a while to build up to the "accident" and the resulting humour is hit and miss, but a perfectly cast Deborah Kerr and Frank Sinatra keep the film afloat. Both were well past 40 at the time and they capture two complete flip-sides well; Sinatra has become complacent, all too settled into life, whereas a high-strung Kerr is in the midst of a midlife crisis, worried by the very certainties that Sinatra finds comfort in. The supporting characters are not terribly interesting; as his best friend, Dean Martin is too much the polar opposite of Sinatra and while John McGiver, Cesar Romero and Hermione Baddeley have their good bits, they never register strongly. Martin's bachelor pad is something else though, and -- alongside the likes of 'Under the Yum Yum Tree' -- it is a testament to the imaginativeness of early '60s interior decoration with jutting stone walls, several indoor plants and a fireplace in the centre of the living room. The nightclub sets are nifty too. Of course, excellent sets alone are not reason enough to watch a motion picture, but they are certainly an extra delight in this big screen showcase for Kerr's comedic talents. Her very proper and refined British vocal mannerisms render her indignation all the more amusing, and imperfect as the film may well be, it certainly offers an acute look at a middle aged couple both learning to reevaluate what they want in life.

My usual personal cutoff includes the year 1965 when watching classic films. I have been trying to watch as many Dean Martin, Deborah Kerr, and Frank Sinatra films as possible up to 1965, so this fit the bill. This movie, however, was quite a disappointment even with my low expectations from the ratings. It was so risqué compared to the classics I love from just a couple of years before. I felt like a prude at first. I really prefer classic films made between 1937-1959. This film is a great reminder as to why.This actually could have been a great movie, but it was barely passable thanks to bad writing and unenthusiastic male leads. It had its cute moments but they were intermixed with babes in bikinis way too much. Also, the usually charming Sinatra played the heavy and he played it a bit too heavy. Dean was charming as always except when getting an oil rubdown. Sadly, then he just looked like a bit of a creepy old man. Kerr was not playing with her often Oscar caliber script, but I'm afraid she was just passing her prime for great parts. She did put in a valiant effort to her credit.I liked the sweet and tidy ending, but it's still not a new personal favorite. The only thing that suffered was my expectations for what could have been a cute and funny fluff piece film had everyone just tried harder.

This movie stars Deborah Kerr, one of the greatest actresses in history. She was nominated for Academy Awards six times and should have been nominated a few more times. I just saw her in "Night of the Iguana," and I thought that was another performance she should have gotten an academy award nomination for. I have never seen her give a bad performance. She gives a charming and funny performance here, keeping the movie together. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin are spotty, good in some scenes, not-so-good in others.Sinatra is mostly sleepwalking, with Martin occasionally giving some funny lines, but Sinatra doing one-take -- let me out of here,is it 5 o'clock yet -- readings. This could have been a good movie. There are a couple of ways they could have gone with it. First, they could have turned it into a real musical. They already had two of the greatest singers of the time and Deborah Kerr who had starred in "The King and I". How hard would it have been to hire a couple of songwriters to knock out eight songs and get a choreographer to stage a few numbers. This would have added some energy to the slow,plot. Okay, if they didn't want to turn is into a musical, they could have made it into a more realistic comedy. In the movie, Deborah is tired of her marriage to dull Frank and wants to marry swinging Dean. Fine, lets do it. Only in the movie, Deborah gets a fake divorce from Frank and a fake marriage to Dean. This is silly, not funny. In order for the movie to work, the divorce and marriage had to be real. This would, no doubt, have made Frank really sad, and not just pretend sad, as in the film, but that would have made us care about him. Because it is not a real divorce, and Frank and Deborah's marriage isn't really threatened, nor is Frank and Dean's friendship, there is no intensity to the film.Divorce is a painful process. The filmmakers, and, I suspect, Frank Sinatra, didn't want any of that pain in the film. They just wanted a breezy comedy. Unfortunately, fake pain from a fake divorce does not equal comedy. Slipping on a banana peel is funny, faking slipping on a banana peel is not. Most of the film is hit and miss. Joi Lansing as Dean's curvy secretary was funny. Having 21 year old Davey Davison as a Go-Go dancer lusting after 49 year old Frank was not.You know the direction is not very good when you have Nancy Sinatra playing a scene as Frank Sinatra's daughter and you're convinced by the end of the scene that they have never met each before.