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Marriage on the Rocks
Ad-agency president Dan Edwards goes to Mexico to celebrate his nineteenth wedding anniversary and winds up getting divorced by mistake, whereupon his wife Valerie marries his best friend Ernie Brewer by mistake.
Release : | 1965 |
Rating : | 5.7 |
Studio : | Warner Bros. Pictures, Sinatra Enterprises, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Set Decoration, |
Cast : | Frank Sinatra Deborah Kerr Dean Martin Cesar Romero Hermione Baddeley |
Genre : | Comedy Romance |
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Reviews
So much average
Overrated
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
I really don't understand the harsh treatment given this 60s comedy. Dean Martin gets all the laughs and Frank Sinatra plays the straight guy. But Cesar Romero is even funnier as a priest/lawyer. Thats a standard comedy ploy. They are all playing to type. Dean played the same role in all his Matt Helm films. Romero played a similar role in (comedy wise) Weekend in Havana. What really surprised me was how well Deborah Kerr acted her part. My only objection is that the movie took too long to wrap up.
Watching "Marriage on the Rocks," it's hard to image that it was made by a studio that turned out so many great movies in the 35 years prior to this one. But then, Warner Brothers wasn't alone in making such dull and boring fluff in the 1960s and beyond.The only reason I give this film four stars is because of two performers – Deborah Kerr and Cesar Romero. They give it their best with the material they have. Kerr plays Val Edwards. Why in the world such a talented actress would agree to make this movie is beyond me, but she does try to put some life into her character and make her somewhat interesting. Cesar Romero plays Miguel Santos. I don't know if the script called for the level of excitement and energy his character provides – but I suspect he pushed it some in an effort to elevate the film.Other reviews have noted that Frank Sinatra as Dan Edwards and Dean Martin as Ernie Brewer are pretty much playing their everyday roles in life. At least the roles that were for their public image. Martin was not a late night carouser with the pack, but went home to be with his family. Neither actor does anything to lift this film beyond boredom. Sinatra just isn't believable as an ad agency magnate. And, Martin's playboy role is way over the top so that any humor it might have otherwise is lost in tedium.The screenplay is blasé for this film. There can't be even half a dozen clever or witty lines. The film just sinks without any real humor. We know that all the leads could act in dramatic roles, and the males could croon some lovely tunes. As one other reviewer noted, had they put some songs in here, the studio would have boosted the film and made it at least entertaining.
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.
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.