Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I'm surprised this movie received such laudable reviews. Although I've now reached the age when I have a lot of trouble remembering even the title of the movie I saw yesterday, let alone what it was about and who was in it, I remember seeing "Bachelor in Paradise" on first release quite well. I enjoyed it far more than the audience did, but I'm still amazed that Hope was nominated for a Golden Globe and actually won the 1962 Laurel Award. The movie has a slow start. It's not until the sequence in which Lana Turner shows Hope over his prospective house that the wisecracks flow thick and fast. Unfortunately, it's the one highlight in an otherwise somewhat pedestrian Hope vehicle that is over-clogged with Miss Turner whose role has obviously been built up. She is such an uninteresting performer, even Prentiss upstages her. She's only effective as a foil for Hope. Her own scenes, especially the one with Porter, are boring. But Sundberg and McGiver make the best of their thin material.

Bob Hope (and a stunt double used in kissing scenes !) is a writer of dirty books who is caught out by the IRS and goes to write a book about suburban America in a ticky tacky housing estate in California called Paradise Village.The normal pratfalls occur, including with a husband with a Morris Minor (?) and one of those drive in restaurants like in "American Graffitti".The stars drive around in swoopy convertibles provided by Chrysler, with the witless suburbanites driving around in podgy, old fashioned Chevrolets and sidevalve Fords. Product placement – TWA airlines.

Bob Hope is a "Bachelor in Paradise" in this 1961 film also starring Lana Turner, Don Porter, Jim Hutton, Paula Prentiss, Janis Paige and Virginia Grey. Hope plays an author, A.J. Niles, whose specialty is the sexual practices of countries. When the IRS forbids him to leave the country, it's suggested that he concentrate on the U.S. He's sent to a development in California called Paradise and set up in a rental home. It's actually the home of one of the managers of the development, Rosemary Howard (Turner), and she lives elsewhere for the time being. Keeping his identity a secret, Adam, as he is called, holds seminars and discussion groups for the women of Paradise on how to keep their marriages fresh. Some of his advice works; some doesn't. Meanwhile, he's being pursued by the sexy but married Dolores Jynson, and he himself is after the beautiful Rosemary.This seems to be a very popular film with viewers who post here. I didn't make all the connections with it that some did as I don't come from this kind of background, but I can well appreciate how it would resonate if I had. It's a pleasant enough film, and it is a lot of fun to see all of the '60s furnishings, colors and styles of hair and dress and to realize how mores have changed with the years. The cast is very good (and very '60s) as well. People probably thought Prentiss and Hutton were married as they were paired together so often due to Prentiss' above average height, and it's always great to see Janis Paige and Virginia Grey.My favorite Bob Hope era is that of the 1940s, where he had great material well suited to him. His youthfulness and the cowardly character he played, along with the situations he got into always made his films sparkle. And what leading ladies - Madeline Carroll, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, etc. Here he is teamed with glamorous Lana Turner who looks very beautiful in the film and has the right coolness and sophistication for the part. As for Hope, at the age of 58, he doesn't have that boyish, enthusiastic, naive quality of the old days, and the jokes he's delivering are pretty stale.Unlike "The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell," "Bachelor in Paradise" is not a dud. Though it's dated, that's part of the fun, and it has some genuinely funny moments, a lively cast and that American icon, Bob Hope. You can love him or hate him, but you can't deny he was a remarkable entertainer to many generations.

Bob Hope was 58 and Lana Turner was 40 when they made this movie. They have no chemistry whatsoever so a romance is not believable. Perhaps with softened makeup and hair she would have been appealing. Anyway the story is beside the point now, 45 years later.The movie is all about the huge, spacious, tract developments in undeveloped parts of California in 1961. I lived in one, so this movie takes me back there. Watching it takes me back to those days when Kennedy was the new president, when there were brand new houses in pale pink, light green, and yellow; each house divided from its neighbour by a row of cacti. Families moved to them from the older, two-story traditional houses. It was supposed to be a great thing to have no stairs; to live in a sprawling "rancher." Just looking at the houses with the huge kitchens and wall phones brings nostalgia, as only the very rich can afford space now; back then it was taken for granted.A major "comedic" event in this film is Bob putting too much detergent in the washer, and the ensuing crisis when soap suds flood the entire house. The houses were spacious and everything was inexpensive - such houses were $20,000 new. Nowadays any surviving houses from that era have been remodeled and no longer have the orange built-in bars, the gold appliances, or wood grained walls. This is my parents' world, post-war - 16 years after the end of WW II. This is an era where everything is available, where the kitchen is the size of a restaurant, but there is no happiness whatsoever.A scene in the supermarket is jarring when a little girl who had been left in the car by her mother is talking to Bob Hope and her mother comes along and just leaves her with him as she goes about her shopping. That would never happen now and reminds us of a more innocent and trusting time.The development is called Paradise. It's more like Paradise Lost, or Discarded. There's a dark subplot of an unhappy marriage, a couple that is "practically divorced" and the wife (Janis Paige) is throwing herself at Bob Hope. But he's secretly a gentleman who only has eyes for the stiff, unmarried Lana Turner, and when he finally gets her, there is the obligatory panning across the floor showing their discarded clothing and then we hear her giggles. Just like a Rock Hudson/Doris Day ending.Then the movie ends and I guess maybe we are meant to think they will have a real life together. They're too old to start having kids to populate the housing tract and be ignored and spoiled, so maybe they will write and think and discuss real things and have a happy life together.The sixties are gone - but here in this movie we have the remnants of what it started out to be, if people could only have held on to it and preserved something for the future.Who knew a fluff piece like this would be so thought provoking 40 years later. I thank Turner Classics for realizing these are valuable period pieces that give us insight on a bygone age. An age where people lost the values they had in the 30s and 40s. After the war, people wanted comfort and ease, and wanted their kids to enjoy a carefree life without the privation of the depression and the war. Unfortunately it only shows that comfort and ease do not bring happiness.