How to Commit Marriage (1969) Reviews

• Some Funny One Liners but overall Dullsville!

  Hoohawnaynay2004-02-05

  Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason do spew a few really funny one liners, but the movie has the look and feel of a TV sitcom. Jane Wyman wears the same hairstyle here that she has had since the early 50's and I think she is still wearing it the same way! This movie is harmless fluff, but it is fun to watch Bob & Jackie insult each other. Many famous faces in this movie, Tina Louise, Tim Matheson, Joanna Cameron who later went on to the Saturday morning kids show "Shazaam & Isis". Maureen Arthur is quite funny as a big breasted client of Bob. After Jane gives her the once over staring at her cleavage, Maureen gets off the barb, "Well, it's nothing you couldn't buy"! Many fat jokes at Jackie's expense. Too bad the whole movie couldn't have been as funny as some of the jokes. Still, not as hard to watch as all the garbage they pass off as entertainment today! (Friends, Survivor, etc)

• Starring Bob "How D'Ya Like My Nehru Jacket?" Hope & Jackie "To the moon in the 7th house, Alice!" Gleason

  ajm-82005-11-06

  In the intended generation gap comedy, Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason play bickering not-quite-in-laws. I say "not-quite" because Gleason's son and Hope's daughter are cohabiting without benefit of matrimony. Living in sin. Shacking up, don't you know. The kids have a baby out of wedlock and put it up for adoption so they can concentrate on performing in their Top Ten psychedelic rock group, The Comfortable Chair (Cue Cardinal Fang: "The COMFY CHAIR!?!") Hope and estranged wife Jane Wyman (whose real-life ex-husband was governor of California when this film was made) adopt the tot using fake identities and, after a round of 3 a.m. feedings, grudgingly reconcile. Jackie discovers that Hope & Wyman have the grandchild, revealing the info during a golf match between Hope and a chimp. (You're ahead of me. Bob loses.) But Ol' Ski Nose solves everything by impersonating the youngsters' guru, a Maharishi-like religious leader, at a huge concert. In disguise, Bob tells the kids to forget nirvana and perfect happiness and get married instead. By the time everyone figures out who's who, the rock stars have their baby AND wedding rings, Bob and Jane are back together and the new house Bob just sold Jackie gets destroyed in a mudslide. Even for a wacky 1960s comedy, the events in this movie defy logic: What adoption agency would instantly hand over a newborn to a decidedly over-the-hill couple? Wouldn't Hope and Wyman face prison sentences for using phony names to get the baby? And how could Jackie Gleason attract Tina "I Trained at the Actors Studio, But They're Going to Put 'She was Ginger on Gilligan's Island' On My Tombstone" Louise? Hope's probably the LAST guy in Hollywood to have been defending monogamy, given his notorious unfaithfulness to wife Dolores over a seven-decade marriage, and it's doubly offensive that he spoofed an Eastern religious figure to do so. Imagine the justifiable outcry had he impersonated a priest or a rabbi. Gleason's in decent form but is given little to do. HOW TO COMMIT MARRIAGE isn't as utterly bizarre as another Gleason '60s vehicle, SKIDOO (1968), but simply one of Hope's worst starring films -- a pity, because for around 25 years Hope WAS a legitimately great movie comedian. At least it's interesting to see Leslie Nielsen play the straight man in this film, and the young lovers are JoAnna Cameron (who set the hearts of seven-year-old boys aflutter as ISIS in the 1970s) and Tim Matheson (who, FIFTEEN years after this movie, would still be playing a collegian in UP THE CREEK).

• How to commit comedy.

  Psalm522008-10-27

  Recently watched this film twice over three days. It grew on me. Gleason gives a hilarious performance worthy of an Oscar nomination as Oliver Poe. Poe is a cutting-edge record industry producer who takes no bullshit and comically wrecks the establishment mindset of his almost in-laws (Hope & Wyman). Poe is finally brought back to Earth in the end by his loving and patient mistress (Louise) who delivers one of the best lines (para-phrasing) "I told Oliver if he doesn't give in this Queen isn't sleeping in his King." It's a funny movie w/ plenty of good performances (Arthur, Corey, & Matheson) and in a much undeveloped brief cameo Nielson (a decade before Airplane, Police Squad). Another undeveloped role is that of the Benson's young daughter (Cameron) and the script should have focused more on her relationship with the father of her child and how her pregnancy wasn't communicated to her parents (Hope & Wyman). Instead it uses them as plot devices so her parents adopt their grandchild… just watch it yourself. This movie is harmless fluff and it is fun to watch Gleason & Hope insult each other.

• HOPE-less

  JasparLamarCrabb2006-01-20

  An awful movie. Another Z-grade comedy starring Bob Hope. This time, Hope is joined by Jackie Gleason and Jane Wyman, but even their combined talents aren't enough to raise this dud above the level of a sitcom...a bad sitcom. Hope and wife Wyman plan to divorce, but decide to stay together when they find out their daughter plans on marrying Gleason's son. Hope is insufferable and Wyman has little to do. Gleason, as a rock-n-roll record producer, does seem to be having a good time and he clearly has some fun with sexy co-star Tina Louise. Beyond that, HOW TO COMMIT MARRIAGE has little to offer. The supporting cast includes future National Lampooner Tim Matheson, who plays Gleason's son, stuffy Leslie Neilsen, and "Professor" Irwin Corey --- it's hard to believe people really thought HE was funny!

• The Chimp Makes Them Look Like Chumps

  bkoganbing2006-05-05

  The daughter of Bob Hope and Jane Wyman and the son of Jackie Gleason are in love and ready to wed. What they don't know is Hope and Wyman are considering divorce. Gleason has some rather negative view on marriage in the first place. They find out and it shatters some illusions. Since it's the Sixties, what to do but go live together. Of course with a blessed event arriving that does complicate things. Now the young folks, Tim Matheson and JoAnna Cameron are presented as fairly intelligent people. So why anyone would listen to religious faker Irwin Corey and give the kid up for adoption is beyond me. But that's what the film asks you to believe. Two of the funniest men of the last century were Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason. So why they got stuck with a mediocre story idea like this is beyond me. I can't believe that the two of them had they looked could have found a better story idea. When a golf playing Marquis Chimp steals the film you know you've got trouble.