Take Her, She's Mine (1963)

The Worst Film Ever

Highly Overrated But Still Good

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I usually get a laugh out of this cornball material because the Ephrons have done such a good job on the script, Jimmy Stewart is in his element as the perplexed and grouchy father, and, as his daughter, Sandra Dee was a 1950s icon, with her magnificent bosom and fruity New Jersey voice.The story, briefly: Dee leaves her bourgeois home in Pacific Palisades and goes to a fancy woman's college in New England to study art. He letters home indicate that she has met boys and a mysterious telegram arrives at 2:30 in the morning explaining that all charges have been dropped and she's been released. Puzzled and irritated, Stewart flies East where he's introduced to Beatnik coffee houses and sit ins for free speech.Dee flunks out and gets an art scholarship to Paris, where she hooks up with a young man who must be handsome because he resembles Warren Beatty. Of course, he's an aristocrat and terribly wealthy too, so we know the movie will end expectably. Before that happens, Stewart flies to Paris to check on her, gets arrested in a French whore house, and is photographed jumping in his underwear from a tourist boat on the Seine.It was about this time that Stewart made a couple of family comedies -- this one, "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation," and "Dear Bridget." This is the best of the three, by far. Stewart's appeal was fading because he was getting older, as all of us are. He had some good movies ahead of him but few involved romance. Cast as a naive lover, as in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence," he seemed out of place, not because of anything in his performances.He plays the same role here, essentially, as in "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" -- the pompous, self-righteous, thoroughly conventional father who is unable to cope with the social changes taking place around him. He can't bring himself to use the word "virgin" in front of his post-pubescent daughter. He's the guy who querulously demands to know why Dee's mother, Audrey Meadows, hasn't had one of those "talks" with her daughter to explain the birds and the bees. I swear I'm not making that up.The script is a lot funnier than the other attempts at comedy, which were pretty low brow. I'll give an example. Stewart visits a coffee shop in which Dee is employed as a singer and dishwasher. It's all very innocent but Stewart has reason to believe that Dee is a stripper. Peeved but sly, he asks the waiter if the girls take off their clothes. "No -- if they did, who would look at them? I'd rather look at my Aunt Minnie." Now Stewart is piqued. He collars the young kid and demands an apology. "Why? What's it to you if I don't look at them?" Stewart explains he's Dee's father. "You mean you WANT me to look at them?" Absolutely not! Stewart replies that he doesn't want the waiter to look at his daughter naked but he resents the implication that his daughter isn't worth looking at naked. It sounds silly, but the exchange is really amusing and Stewart and Bob Denver handle it perfectly.I find it curious, too, the way the film balances itself so delicately on the old-fashioned values of the 1950s and the revolution of youth in the 1960s. Stewart represents the former and Dee gradually changes from complacency to independence.Nice job.

Featherweight comedy starring James Stewart as a harried dad who goes to Paris to bring back coed daughter Sandra Dee after she's fallen for a Frenchman. That's it. Stewart tries mightily as he gets into one embarrassing (albiet harmless) predicament after another while taking kooky advice from loony Brit Robert Morley. Morley gets most of the film's laughs. Director Henry Koster keeps things at a mostly sitcom level and though at least some this was presumably filmed on location, it's mostly studio bound, high gloss stuff. There is a colorful supporting cast including Irene Tsu, Audrey Meadows and, briefly, Bob Denver and top notch cinematography by Lucien Ballard. Based on a play that somehow ran for a year on Broadway.

An all around fun movie from a time when they didn't have to rely on foul language, sex, and violence for their plots. I had never seen Sandra Dee in anything other than her Gidget roles. Wish they made movies like that today - a comedy that was actually funny. :)

A naive teen provides plenty of excitement for her well intentioned Dad, who tries keeping her on an even keel. Fun for die hard fans of Jimmy Stewart, like me. Originally, a play which starred Art Carney and Elizabeth Ashley, who won a Tony for her performance.