Brilliant and touching

An absolute waste of money

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

I saw this as a young man at a new theater that just opened near my home in 1969. The problem most critics have, is they do not realize that many movies are just what they were made to be, ENTERTAINMENT, people! Not only was this a great story, but to see two people coming to grips with the bad choices in their lives, and trying to make it right. It did not hurt that it was riotously funny as well. Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve were at the top of their game as well. Check this one out for great laughs, and a overall feel good time!

Upwardly mobile investment banker, married to a shallow mannequin out in the suburbs, picks up a sophisticated Parisian beauty at his boss's mod party in New York City, unaware she's the boss's wife. Forgotten star-vehicle for Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve (who replaced an unavailable Shirley MacLaine) is an instantly-dated piece of absurdist romantic comedy in the modern idiom circa 1969. Most of the secondary characters are deadpan eccentrics who take turns staring at the strait-laced leads as if they're the ones who are odd, while the busy camera tries to catch everything about the city that is weird-for-a-laugh (often straining to do so). Lemmon is still doing his nervous schnook from "The Apartment" nine years earlier, only this time with dark brown hair dye; he never clicks with Deneuve, who never clicks with her unhappily married character. Director Stuart Rosenberg tries to keep the mood loose, but he falls into the general trap of the scenario, that of chic, shallow deadheads working too hard at having a good time. ** from ****

Overall, the plot was a reworking of "The Graduate" so I thought. Clearly it was supposed to be a pedastol for Catherine Deneuve. See how beautiful she is? She how lovely she is? She is every man's dream. Every woman wants to be her.All she did when you first see her in this thing is laugh at Lemmon bungling around. Because she had to be stunning. She had to dazzle. She had to be every man's. . . . I wonder who she was supposed to be the next of? Was she not on enough magazine covers back then? I don't know how popular she was, but it seems someone wanted her to have more. Perhaps her own agent, or the movie maker here. It was supposed to be a deliberate discovery. All she did was look captivating every time she was shown. Like she was posing for a magazine cover with each shot. Then here came Myrna Loy in the back of that car. Smile, beam, lilt, dazzle, all you want, dear, Myrna has been there before. It was hilarious. Now Deneuve looked at Loy like she was a strict schoolmarm that Deneuve was afraid would chastise her for breathing. There was nothing Deneuve could do now to impress this observer, Loy had covered that territory already and much better. At the age of 30, both Deneuve and Loy were stunning beauties, but Loy was always far more captivating to me, and Loy didn't mug for the camera, she let her own looks do all the work and the mind still worked in that head. Now Deneuve couldn't look at this one in a condescending manner. Loy could have said "yes, dear, you are a very beautiful young lady" and it would have been utterly humiliating for Cat. Loy wrote the book on beauty. Loy built the factory, dredged that river of superficiality before Deneuve was either born. So I guess now Cat had to act? It was the passing of the torch for me. Assume all the mantles you want, you won't overwhelm the pioneer.

Critics often get it wrong and this movie is proof of that. If you watch this movie in the cold and analytical way that critics often do you will see its countless flaws. But if you do this you will also miss its warmth,charm the masterly performances of its cast and a super sixties Bacharach theme song. I urge people to see it and make up their own mind. My guess is you won't fail to be touched.