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Dreadfully Boring

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Doris Day had fourteen films under her belt when she made this one, including three dramatic roles, and was still a major star so why Warners couldn't scare up a better leading man for her than Robert Cummings is a mystery. Cummings had paid his dues in things like King's Row and Dial M For Murder and was an accomplished leading man but by no stretch of the imagination was he a musical comedy leading man. There was absolutely no chemistry between him and Day and as it happened Phil Silvers could have played the leading role twice as well as Cummings. It's one of those films that on paper can't miss; a great cast - Silvers, Eddie Foy, Nancy Walker, Marcel Dalio - eight tuneful songs by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster (who had served Day excellently on Calamity Jane the previous year) which were effective on screen but had no life in the jukes, so that the sum of its parts is all it really is.

LUCKY ME is a prettily Technicolored musical outing from Warner Bros., one that DORIS DAY was obligated to make because of arrangements made by her producer hubby. She should have stuck to her guns and refused to do the film, which doesn't do much for anyone--including its talented supporting cast--ROBERT CUMMINGS, PHIL SILVERS, NANCY WALKER, MARTHA HYER and EDDIE FOY, JR.Day is the singer in a team of stranded players working in the kitchen of a fancy Miami hotel because of a prank played by the obnoxious PHIL SILVERS, whose strident comedy technique is overworked here.When ROBERT CUMMINGS needs a singer for his upcoming Broadway show, he discovers Doris can sing and from then on he and his girlfriend (MARTHA HYER) squabble over her dad's backing for the show and his interest in Doris. That's all there is to the plot.Songs by Sammy Fain and Paul Webster have been tacked onto this slight story with less than impressive results. Only one ballad--done as a dream sequence--has any real worth and it's a beauty called "I Speak to the Stars" which is the only genuine first class song in the movie. A catchy first number, "The Superstition Song," at least gets some interest for the way Doris Day manages to sing it through a lengthy opening sequence.If you're a Doris Day completist and must see all her films--well, that's the only reason for catching up with this one. It's a dud--a real dud. Trite and unfunny as can be.

Warner Bros. certainly skimped when it came down to choosing the latest leading man for a Doris Day movie. Didn't they have any handsome, charismatic actors on the payroll besides Robert Cummings? There are no sparks between Day and Cummings in what amounts to nothing more than a staid and stale musical romance with corny comedic asides. A superstitious chorine down Miami way gets stuck washing dishes while waiting for her big break; she happens to meet a popular songwriter while dodging black cats and sidewalk cracks, but he's courting her under an alias as a car mechanic (!). Comic deceptions are always good material for a Day picture--and when she finds out the truth, her slow-burn is something to behold--but Cummings really has no reason to be deceiving this girl, and the plot starts coming apart before the picture even gets going. Doris is supported by a vaudeville-styled trio who travel together (Phil Silvers, Nancy Walker and Eddie Foy, Jr.), and they seem just a bit mature and stodgy for her, which weakens the musical numbers. Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster are responsible for the lackluster song score (they must have used up all their natural resources on "Calamity Jane" the year before--there's not a "Secret Love" in the bunch). Some color and frivolity, much of it forced. *1/2 from ****

For the film Lucky Me, Doris Day was reunited with composers Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster who wrote the score for Calamity Jane and gave Doris one of her biggest hits, Secret Love in one of her biggest film successes. Unfortunately none of the songs from Lucky Me was ever any kind of hit for Day and the film is a very ordinary backstage story.With some establishing shots in Miami Beach done in Cinemascope, Lucky Me is also the name of the show composer Robert Cummings is writing the score for. Doris is part of a quartet act that consists of Phil Silvers, Eddie Foy, Jr., and Nancy Walker. Through some of the usual Phil Silvers shenanigans, the group has to work to pay off a debt to restaurant owner Marcel Dalio.Cummings is staying at the hotel that Dalio's restaurant is at and again through shenanigans, Day and Cummings meet. Day thinks he's garage mechanic and Cummings keeps up the pretense as has been done in more movies I can remember. That's because he's romancing daughter of bankroll, Bill Goodwin in the person of Martha Hyer.If you can't tell where this is all going you haven't seen too many films let alone musicals. It would have been nice if Doris and the gang had been given some hit songs from this film, but Fain and Webster who won Academy Awards for Secret Love and Love Is A Many Splendored Thing came up short in the score for Lucky Me. Eddie Foy, Jr. and Nancy Walker came up short in footage as well. Especially Nancy Walker who is one of the funniest people around. I believe there is some moments for her in the Warner Brothers vaults if anyone wants to do a director's cut for Lucky Me. Oddly enough Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker within the next 10 years would co-star on Broadway in Do-Re-Mi which was a big success, but never made it to Hollywood.Doris's fans will like Lucky Me, others can take or leave it and be considered lucky either way.