Price: $14.98 USD
He had what every man wanted'then she came along! Legendary funnyman Jack Lemmon stars in this "hilarious farce of almost unremitting fun" (The Hollywood Reporter) with the "breathtakingly beautiful" (LA Herald-Examiner) Virna Lisi. Bachelorhood is bliss for cartoonist Stanley Ford (Lemmon)complete with an English butler (Terry-Thomas), delectable dames and extra-dry martinis. But when he attends a bachelor party and meets an Italian beauty (Lisi) who pops out of a cake, his fate is sealed. The next morning, he discovers he's married to her even though she can barelyspeak Englishand now the consummate bachelor will go to any lengths to untie the knot!
"Being married is the normal way to live... isn't it?" The note of doubt at the end of that statement is fully exploited in How to Murder Your Wife (1965), a barbed piece of war-between-the-sexes comedy. Cartoonist Jack Lemmon, an exponent of the Playboy philosophy, lives in the ultimate swinging bachelor townhouse ("Everything masculine and perfect," manservant Terry-Thomas says approvingly) until a drunken evening leads to marriage with an Italian bombshell (Virna Lisi). What to do? The whole movie seems to exist in order to arrive at Lemmon's clever courtroom oration in the final half-hour, which is tartly funny if datedly misogynistic: he unleashes a male fantasy of trashing the gray-flannel suit and late-model station wagon for Hefneresque freedom. The wheel-spinning of the early reels is curious coming from screenwriter George Axelrod, usually a reliable satirist. He had better hours than this, notably in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Lord Love a Duck. --Robert Horton
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
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