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the audience applauded

Great Film overall

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Travelogue-tragedy-soap opera set in Greece, London, and New York, all of which look luscious in the wide-screen color photography of 1963. And jeez, what a collection of unhappy principals. Peter Finch, a nice-guy British publishing executive, is miserably married to Angela Lansbury, a contemptuous shrew who suffered the effects of a bad deed of his years before and won't ever let him forget it. He crosses the pond to help out buddy and co-worker Arthur Hill, who's also miserable, being unable to please his much younger, fragile wife, Jane Fonda, who also suffers from being the daughter of self-centered, selfish Constance Cummings. She and Finch respond to each other's temperaments and mutual love of Greece, and they're off to Athens and Mykonos and other well-photographed spots, along with Lansbury, who continues to make Finch miserable and pursues an affair, as things heat up between him and Fonda. For a soap, it's unusually literate, and also unusually visual, what with all the island-hopping, and I find it compelling, if a downer. All the actors are good, and Fonda and Lansbury are rather better than that. It's compromised by a an abrupt, depressing ending, and the MGM orchestra saws away more than it has to. But I, too, am surprised to find it has only a 5.0 rating on the IMDB, and I'd urge fans of literate melodrama, and 1960s time capsules, to give it a look the next time TCM shows it.

The film is such a old movie cliché: Rich, sickly young woman married to an older man who neglects her. She gets involved with his good friend whose wife is a nutjob snob. The entire concept is one that is hard to wrap one's head around in the 2000's. First, maybe everyone should stop smoking and drinking and Fonda's character should take some vitamins and see a therapist about her mother. Throughout the entire film, a relative kept saying "rich people" explaining to herself the crazy that was going on. I felt compelled to correct her and say, "No, Hollywood on a bad hair day." Could not take my eyes off of Fonda's wig. 2 Stars for being able to see young Jane Fonda and Greece from another era, though.

If fashion and Mediterranean scenery tend to dazzle you about a movie then you'll likely be all up in the clouds dancing over this one. For the rest of us who desire somewhat more from our hours invested in a movie, In-the-Cool-of-the-Day falls far short of the mark I'm afraid.It's your basic "Two people married to other people fall in love on a romantic European trip, having been put together alone due to circumstances and also the situation in each of their marriages." In Fonda's character's case she's simply not in love with her doting and rather 'doormattish' husband. In Finch's character's case his wife (Landsbury) is a miserable joy-killing shrew of a woman who is playing ever the martyr and guilt-tripping him over a past tragedy in their lives. While Fonda's husband can't make the trip, Finch and Landsbury end up fighting and she walking out, leaving he and Fonda to continue on alone.The back story on Fonda's character is that she has been sickly since early childhood, having had multiple surgeries on her lungs and nearly dying. In any normal family of the time that would mean the only sensible course of action, that being no one smokes near her. But in THIS film the production (writers, director, producer, etc) all thought it was no big deal to just have all involved puffing away like steam engines including Jane's character herself.While the view on smoking was a little different back in '63 than it is today it is still fairly unthinkable that a physician would raise major concern over a trip by car through the mountains due to a little rain yet have no quarrel whatsoever about a girl with serious respiratory ailments smoking like a chimney.As for the ending all I'll say is I found it abrupt, unsurprising, and disappointing, Fonda herself is absolutely gorgeous. The vistas and views of the countryside are spectacular. The acting is decent. The story and plot is where this film falls flat.4/10

No wonder this wasn't even listed in my comprehensive special edition video book covering thousands of movies ~ not even as a dog. Since yesterday, 10/16/06, was Angela Lansbury's 81st birthday they featured her movies on Turner Classics. Evidently Jane Fonda must still have some pull with Ted, because her performance didn't warrant viewing; it made ME uncomfortable watching her. Angela, in a recent interview, mentioned her disappointment with that movie. No surprise! That's 90 minutes I'll never get back. However, I made a lovely cauliflower au gratin and a pumpkin pie while the movie played on our kitchen TV (I kept thinking something would happen or the story would get better; it didn't).