Move Over Darling (1963)

Saw all the movie!

This was a treat! Finally getting to see the entire movie without the parts they cut out for commercials! Only saw the movie on TV old movies, so some parts of it I had never seen. It is my favorite Doris Day movie!
May 6, 2008

One of Day's Better Movies; Ritter shines

In Move Over Darling, Doris Day escapes from her "Polly Purebread" roles in films perfected with Rock Hudson, and comes into her own as a woman who tries to reclaim what was rightfully hers, with an all star staff providing all star comedic results in a perfect farce format.

An updating of the Cary Grant-Irene Dunn film My Favorite Wife, this film also has the shadow of Marilyn Monroe's final and uncompleted movie "Something's Got to Give" (Monroe's inability to stick to a filming sequence ruined the project and her death ended all hope of salvaging the film), Move Over Darling has been regulated to an asterick on Day's well know film career, and was one of the last of 1960s comedies to make it to DVD format.

The plot is pure Hollywood. Doris plays Ellen Wagstaff Arden, who we meet immediatly after she has been rescued from a tropical Island for five years that she shared with another survivor of a ship wreck. After revealing herself to she shocked mother-in-law (played to the hilt by Themla Ritter) Doris discovers that she has two problems. The first is that just that morning her husband Nick (James Garner) has had declared legally dead so (this is the second problem) he can marry Bianca (Polly Bergen). The film follows Doris as she tries to reclaim her husband (who would prefer Ellen over Bianca any day) who just can't seem to get out the words to tell Bianca that Ellen is still alive. Also appearing in teh film at his comic best if Edgar Buchannan (sic) as the confused judge who has to sort out the whole legal mess.

Move Over Darling is solid entertainment, beautiful sets, and well acted. You should move over all those DVD's that you've been meaning to watch and pop this one in the play and enjoy these actors, all at teh top of their game. April 24, 2008

The Original Romantic Comedy

If you like to watch a romantic movie and be highly amused at the same time, this is THE ONE. A remake with one of the original cast, Doris Day as usual, brings her own unique funny pathos to this lovely film. Do the ironing, watch the film, the job will seem worthwhile. April 21, 2008

A Day fan!

Another Doris Day at her best! Great movie. Doris knows how to keep things clean and innocent! April 1, 2008

James Garner trumps anything you could ever be.

Who knew that James Garner was as good, if not better, than Rock Hudson? We did. We watchers of Maverick, Marlowe, Nichols, Rockford Files.

And here, in the midst of a romantic comedy, Garner finds room to take care of a woman who was his supposedly deceased wife, and he loves her with no loss of care and passion, if mixed with a little surprise.

If there is room in this movie for a bit of mid-century American confusion as sexual roles shifted and morphed, Garner did not cop out and look for a safe new-world harbor; he hung in and tried to hold onto the certainty that a wife would want to cling to.

And that, in the timeframe of this movie, is what happy endings look like. And good for them. And bad for us, for no longer having any underpinnings. March 25, 2008

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