You know you've found a terrible movie where the best actor is a chimp!! Sadly, the chimp is only a bit player! Yes, "How to Commit Marriage" is an incredibly unfunny and offensive pile of bile from the hip, wacky 1960s. Jackie Gleason and Bob Hope is an odd combination but with this much talent, you'd assume the film would be funny. Well, you'd assume wrong!
When the film begins, Bob Hope and Jane Wyman are a couple who decide, out of the blue, to get divorced. Soon, their daughter arrives and announces she wants to marry a nice guy. Because of this, the parents decide NOT to tell her about the pending divorce. As for his father (Jackie Gleason), he is a crass jerk who believes in two things...money and himself. He is a completely amoral jerk who tries to convince the couple to just live together. They agree...and when she gets pregnant, he then convinces them to give up the baby because 'babies are a drag'...and they do! Her parents, though divorced, swoop in to take their grandchild. There's more...but by this point the film REALLY lost my interest.
The bottom line is that instead of making the film funny, THE joke is that the parents all decide to become hip....hip and VERY selfish. While I am NOT an old fashioned guy, the film seems to be a great endorsement of family and traditional values...mostly because everyone in this film is so hateful and nasty...especially Gleason's character. Perhaps a reworking of this MIGHT have worked, but with one actor well into his 60s and the other two in their 50s, it all comes off as amazingly contrived and ridiculous (you just have to see Hope in his Nehru jacket!). The script, actors and filmmakers all try way too hard to be clever and with it...but completely forgot to be funny. It's among the very worst films Gleason, Hope and Wyman have made...perhaps THE worst.
When the film begins, Bob Hope and Jane Wyman are a couple who decide, out of the blue, to get divorced. Soon, their daughter arrives and announces she wants to marry a nice guy. Because of this, the parents decide NOT to tell her about the pending divorce. As for his father (Jackie Gleason), he is a crass jerk who believes in two things...money and himself. He is a completely amoral jerk who tries to convince the couple to just live together. They agree...and when she gets pregnant, he then convinces them to give up the baby because 'babies are a drag'...and they do! Her parents, though divorced, swoop in to take their grandchild. There's more...but by this point the film REALLY lost my interest.
The bottom line is that instead of making the film funny, THE joke is that the parents all decide to become hip....hip and VERY selfish. While I am NOT an old fashioned guy, the film seems to be a great endorsement of family and traditional values...mostly because everyone in this film is so hateful and nasty...especially Gleason's character. Perhaps a reworking of this MIGHT have worked, but with one actor well into his 60s and the other two in their 50s, it all comes off as amazingly contrived and ridiculous (you just have to see Hope in his Nehru jacket!). The script, actors and filmmakers all try way too hard to be clever and with it...but completely forgot to be funny. It's among the very worst films Gleason, Hope and Wyman have made...perhaps THE worst.