Writer/producer Jack Rose & director Daniel Mann followed this little Dean Martin sex farce in a similar key with WHO’S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BED/’63. Somebody must have liked it . . . but who? The set up has novelist Lana Turner relieved to find hubby’s affair ain’t with babes but with bookies. Now he’s in hock to a mob betting syndicate (big enough to use a UNIVAC electronic brain) for 8Gs. Yikes! Together with Dino’s law partner Eddie Albert, Lana secretly takes over his betting to teach him a lesson just as the guy hits a winning streak. Now, she’s the one in hock. Worse, mob man Walter Matthau wants his client back. Toss in a pair of comic judges (John McGiver; Paul Ford) and a flirty neighbor who’s Matthau’s main squeeze, and you should get a reasonable facsimile of those modern mores comedies Jack Lemmon served up (usually with director Richard Quine) over @ Columbia. Those films haven’t aged well, but at least you can still see the comic footprint. Not here. Mann can’t supply the pace, heedless attitude or heartless efficiency. Even lenser Joseph Ruttenberg, who also did SLEEPING, can’t lend much fizz or glamor. On B’way, you’d slip out after the first act.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: If you do stick around, Ford & McGiver’s buddy act raises a grin, and Matthau’s broad playing eeks out two honest laughs.
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