One of those films I'm not sure how to feel towards

DarthBill

Plot in a nutshell: An anti-social poet (Sean Connery) short on cash and suffering from writer's block is sent to a shrink by his wife (Joanne Woodward). Naturally, things only get worse.

Polarizing mid-60s screwball comedy has some very funny bits here and there, but suffers from over-length and some very dated "to the moon, Alice!" style humor that will undoubtedly rub modern audiences the wrong way. Connery gives his all in a go for broke performance that he probably hoped would help off-set his James Bond image (never mind that his self-destructive poet still fools around with women despite claiming he doesn't like them) but the character is so unlikable that some of the humor falls flat. Other reviewers on here have said that comedy was not old Sean's strong point as a performer; I don't really agree with that (he was after all hilarious as the bumbling father of Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade) but feel it was really more that the character was a hard sell to begin with - and would have been for any actor.

The rest of the cast do the best they can with what's there. It's a little sad watching the late Jean Seberg in this film, seeing her so young, so beautiful, so obviously a fine actress wasting what little time she was going to have in such an unsatisfying comedy as the desperate, sexually frustrated housewife of the primary doctor who finds an afternoon's delight with Connery - and is later hilariously horrified (admittedly one of the film's better moments) to find that he seriously expects her to just roommate with him and his unhappy wife when she expresses an interest in trying to be something more.

Of interest mostly for fans of the stars and fans of the 60s.

score 6/10

DarthBill 21 April 2013

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2785923/