Save your money for something good and enjoyable

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

America's favorite comedian gets all caught up in the Age of Aquarius when his free-thinking daughter drops out of college to join a rock group and search for spiritual enlightenment under the guidance of a bumbling Persian mystic. But there's a twist to the usual generation gap scenario. Bob's wayward kid wants to do the "establishment thing" by tying the knot with her composer boyfriend while her parents have (secretly) decided to call it a day on the marital front.Hope's shot at impersonating the aforementioned guru, complete with flowing robes, turban, fake beard and a drooping orchid which he uses to "bless" his "disciples" provides plenty of chuckles. Another change of costume sees him decked out in a Nehru jacket and sporting a groovy hairstyle as he takes a "space trip" to some pot-filled Go- Go joint down on Sunset.Although a few of the gags fall flat others work just fine as Bob and Jackie Gleason team up to add some real sparkle to the film's better moments.Hope to the perpetually loaded Gleason: "And about your breath... you could start the windmill on an old Dutch painting".Bob had just about lost interest in the big screen by this late stage, having decided to concentrate on his top rating TV shows instead. This was, in fact, his second last theatrical release. And , although it won't be remembered as being one of his best, it's actually a pretty sharp satire of some of the more nonsensical, new age clap trap what was permeating western culture at the time. Even the Beatles quickly realized that they were being taken on a one way elephant ride to fantasy land by their own giggling guru.As for this one, it's a low key walk - thru which doesn't demand much of its stars but it still generates enough laughs along the way to keep it going.Not outstanding but fun

Well, one of my curiosities was settled when I watched this movie starring for the only time Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, and Jane Wyman together. This one turned out to be Ms. Wyman's last theatrical feature and Hope's penultimate one as leading man. Hope has some pretty funny lines in the beginning and has some good rapport with Ms. Wyman up to the scene when they both dress in the '60s fashion style at a club their daughter (JoAnna Cameron) performs in with her partner Tim Matheson who's the son of Gleason here. Gleason himself also seems pretty funny when performing with Hope in trading insults but after a while, the plot goes in nonsense places like having a monkey play golf with Hope that really gets lame. And don't get me started with Professor Irwin Corey as an Indian-style wise man who Hope later imitates. I did like Hope when he faked a stereotypical Scottish man in another plot point though I don't feel like wasting time recounting that one here. There's also a mixture of film styles like the undercranking of some scenes and the split screen usually presented in these '60s movies that didn't work comically. Still, it was interesting enough for me to see other players like Tina Louise, formerly of "Gilligan's Island", and Matheson-years from his iconic teaming with John Belushi in Animal House, not to mention Leslie Nielson way before his legendary teaming with Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker for Airplane! and the "Police Squad" TV shows/Naked Gun movies. So on that note, How to Commit Marriage is worth a look for those curious of all of the above.

You would think with Hope and Gleason in the same picture that it would be a riot Alice, but sadly not so. Not as bad as the failed team-up of Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett and Morey Amsterdam in 1969's "Muscle Beach Party", but almost. Honestly, you would think that both comedians should have known better. As adversaries in the story, their put downs of each other were very weak, and the picture was already on a down hill slope when Mildred the Chimp joined the action on a golf course. Besides that, there were a number of times while watching the flick that I thought I missed something, as scenes followed one another without a connecting thread. I know I didn't doze off because the clock on the DVD player never hinted at a time lapse I couldn't account for.On top of all that, you had Professor Irwin Corey in the role of a mystic prophet named Baba Zia, who's gimmick consisted of a 'Peace Through Protein' schtick that made no sense at all. Somehow he convinced the Benson's daughter (JoAnna Cameron) and her fiancée (Tim Matheson) to give up their baby to adoption for a cause I can't even begin to comprehend. In fact, the picture offered so many instances of anti-family values (divorce, shacking up, chimpanzee golf), that I couldn't believe it was a Bob Hope vehicle. Gleason with the booze was about the only thing that made any sense.Maybe I'm being too harsh on the film, other viewer comments seem to have found some entertainment value in it. For me though, this was un-funny and a bore to sit through, but that's the promise I made to myself when I started doing these reviews - see it complete from start to finish. This one had me thinking about revising the rules.

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).