recommended

just watch it!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

"If a Man Answers" is a nice comedy-romance that stars two of the most promising new actors from the late 1950s. Sandra Dee and Bobby Darrin had each won a Golden Globe as the most promising newcomer to film. She for her role as Evelyn Leslie in "Until They Sail" of 1957, and he for his role as Tony in "Come September" of 1961. Dee also was in the latter film, and the couple was married by then. This is one of three films they made together while married (1960-67).This film has a very good plot and script. Darin and Dee play newlyweds, Eugene and Chantal. Micheline Presle and John Lund are very good and funny as her parents, John and Germaine Stacy. Cesar Romero is very funny in his short supporting role as Eugene's father, Adam Wright, who poses as Robert Swan, a fictitious love interest of Chantal (and of her mother in days gone by). The plot has a unique aspect, but to tell more would give it away. It's hilarious. Darin sings two songs with the title and credits of this film.This is a film that most people should enjoy for the plot, the characters and the acting. Darin's songs add some flavor and a touch of nostalgia.Darin will be remembered much longer for his great musical talent. He composed music, wrote songs and had a voice that made him one of the great male singers of the 20th century. But for his early death in 1973, Darin likely would have given us many more hit songs and memorable tunes. Can anyone hear "Mack the Knife" being sung and not picture Darrin singing the song that topped the charts in 1959? It continues to be played and heard in movie soundtracks, on radio, and in other venues well into the 21st century. Among his other hit songs were, "Beyond the Sea," "Splish Splash," "Dream Lover," "Let's Fall in Love," and "One for My Baby." Darin and Dee's marriage may have been ideal at the start, but it ended in 1967. Darin died at age 37 after open-heart surgery on Dec. 20, 1973. He had severe rheumatic fever as a child, and wasn't expected to live beyond his teens. Only late in his life and after his death did much of his background become public. Not even he had known that the woman whom he thought was his older sister, Nina, was actually his mother; and that Polly, whom he thought was his mother was really his grandmother. He learned the truth from Nina just five years before he died. Darin was born Walden Robert Cassotto, May 14, 1936, in East Harlem, New York City. His name was that of his mother and maternal grandparents. Nina became pregnant with him in the summer of 1935 when she was 17. Out of wedlock births in those days were very scandalous, and the family wouldn't consider an illegal abortion. So, they moved a few blocks and Polly passed Bobby off as her new son and brother of her teenage daughter Nina. Bobby's maternal grandfather was a gangster who died of pneumonia in prison a year before Darin's birth. Even after Nina told Bobby the truth about their relationship in 1968, she never revealed to him or anyone else who Darin's biological father was. While the family was poor, they were all close. Bobby's health suffered as a child, but he had a great singing voice, and he taught himself to play several instruments Sandra Dee had come from a marriage that ended when she was five. She was born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1942. She was abused by her stepfather and was anorexic most of her life. She was driven by her mother who wanted her to become an actress. She was a model at age four and then an actress in TV commercials. She moved to Hollywood in 1957 and made her first film that year. She became well known and liked in her ingénue roles. Her movie career began waning after her marriage to Darin, and when they separated she became a recluse and alcoholic. She died of kidney disease on Feb. 20, 2005, at age 62. Darin and Dee had one son, Dodd (born in 1961), who wrote a book in 1994 about his parents, "Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee." He also worked on films about his parents and Bobby's music. Kevin Spacey played Darin and Kate Bosworth played Dee in a 2004 biopic, "Beyond the Sea." Before that, PBS aired a 90-minute documentary in 1998, "Bobby Darin: Beyond the Song," and the A&E Biography series ran a 2001 episode, "Bobby Darin: I Want to Be a Legend." Darin had a popular TV show in 1973, "The Bobby Darin Show."While both of these young stars of the mid-20th century had troubled childhoods and tragic ends, they made good marks on society and American culture. We would be missing something had they not been born.

This lush Ross Hunter film of 1962 which attempts to patch together some BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S New York romantic sex comedy imagery and fashions (and scenes) along with a PILLOW TALK / LOVER COME BACK farce script almost succeeds in being enjoyable in 2011 by the fact it is well made. BUT and it is a massive BUT, it is miscast and relies on twee marriage drivel to put across some risqué (at the time) script and situations. Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin might have been a screen team du jour but are not of the calibre of actual adults. Had this been an Elvis Movie instead of Bobby Darin then we might have been in a soon to be classic 60s movie, as he would have the screen charisma Darrin lacks. Dee is fine fun and well dressed, her father the silly sort of role Eddie Albert plays better, and the art direction and set design terrific. But overall it is trite and sexist and really contrived. It is likable but you really have to be kind to it and accept the mentality of the time. The music has the foghorn sounds of forced farce and the silly xylophone tinkling of sitcoms like Bewitched, a TV show this precedes but points to. It gets some good sex talk across by the dubious method of having a French mother sexually prep her ripe daughter!

This movie didn't work for me on any level. The script is blatantly silly, corny, and contrived, with no pretensions of any kind of realism. Because of that you can't take it as a drama, and it's not funny enough for a comedy, so it's just amusing silliness. The overtly contrived, corny ending was just way too silly. Overall, this style of movie is over the top and therefore distasteful. It features explicit sexual references, a refreshing change from the Doris Day style goodie-goodie veneer that's really all sexual innuendo, but still falls flat having long since lost any shock value. Darin doesn't come across well, he just has no sizzle. Dee doesn't appeal to me, neither as cute, beautiful, funny, charming, nor talented. I like the wardrobe and the tiny waist. The chemistry between them didn't work for me. I didn't feel that they really liked or loved each other. Partly that's because of the ludicrous script and situations. The mom might have been OK but I couldn't get over the lame, almost not even there French accent. The script is crude, using obviously contrived devices to move so effortless among the plot points. They fall in love, marry, argue, and connive with the silliest motivations. The foghorn was ineffective and incomprehensible. Even on repeated play of the cartoon opening and pausing it to study and discuss it, I still feel that the meaning of the foghorn was not obvious enough. It might have been OK for then, but it's only good for nostalgia now.

Okay, before I review this movie, I have to complain about some of the pixelating messiness of some of the scenes. While I managed to rewind some scenes I had to skip because of this, I still wish I could have seen the whole movie proper. Even without those technical problems, I don't think I was too enamored of the story with Sandra Dee as a daughter of a French mother and a Boston-bred father having to get married soon so she can give up her gallivantin' ways. Then after she moves to New York, she meets Bobby Darin as a model photographer who wants her in his pictures. She'll only agree to them if he marries her. He does but doesn't want her in them anymore! The rest of the picture has Dee trying to get her husband to pay more attention to her instead of new model-and former friend-Stephanie Powers by using a dog manual to treat him like a pet and then using a "made up" former lover of her mom to get Darin jealous. The performances, from Sandra and Bobby-who's quite hilarious in the beginning-to Powers, John Lund and Micheline Presle as the parents, and Cesar Romero as the guy portraying Dee's "paramour" aren't bad but the whole thing just fell apart after the marriage. I think I would've preferred to see the real-life married couple at the time try to balance their careers with him trying to please both Dee and Powers in whatever demands they give him. As it is, I think I'd only recommend If a Man Answers if you want to see Dee and Darin on-screen together. P.S. The animation at the beginning was probably the best part of the picture. P.P.S. I've now seen the whole movie after wiping the back of the disc. While a little better and I'm upping my rating from 3 to 4, some of my material objections still stand.