Bundle of Joy (1956)

That was an excellent one.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Glossy and tuneful, if terribly contrived, remake of a just-adequate Ginger Rogers comedy vehicle from 1939 ("Bachelor Mother", itself a reworking of "Little Mother" from 1935). Salesgirl, fired at Christmastime from her department store job for 'over-selling', finds an abandoned baby on the steps outside a foundlings home but can't get anyone to believe the child isn't really hers. The spotlight this time is equally on Debbie Reynolds (doing sprightly, decent work as the bachelor mother) and her then-husband Eddie Fisher (leering at the camera while playing a singing junior-executive). Supporting roles are colorfully filled, production and song numbers are decent, though the script lands us smack in the middle of 101 'risque' misunderstandings (she has a baby but not a husband?! And who's the father?). Worth-seeing for Debbie, who sings and dances--and rolls her eyes with expert exaggeration when it's time to change a diaper. **1/2 from ****

I first saw this movie when I was 7 or 8 years old in Los Angeles. It was the first movie I ever saw. I am extremely sentimental about it. I love the songs- expertly written by composer Josef Myrow. I thought Eddie Fisher had a beautiful voice, and the chemistry with Debbie Reynolds was wonderful. I especially loved the fantasy scene in the department store at night. I didn't mind that he wasn't an actor. He pulled it off in my opinion. It's very sad in real life the choices he made, but there were a few glorious years where his singing was at it's best and it was very moving to listen to. The sound quality of his voice was so warm and beautiful and he had excellent phrasing. Someone put several performances of his on UTube and I think people will learn to appreciate him once again. Especially in the slow songs. The movie was a fantasy, and for 98 minutes, it brought me into another world. For those 98 minutes, I could forget everything that went wrong after that. Wish they made movies like that today.Barb

Bundle Of Joy was a musical remake of one of RKO Studio's brightest comedy hits from it's hey day, Bachelor Mother. Taking the roles that Ginger Rogers and David Niven had back in 1939 are the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston of 1956, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Reynolds was an established musical star who was loaned out from MGM to RKO in the studio's waning days for this film. Someone decided that putting Reynolds together with her husband, pop singing star Eddie Fisher was a natural. If musicals were still in vogue, this could have for Eddie Fisher been something like Higher and Higher was for Frank Sinatra which incidentally was also an RKO film. Bundle of Joy alas was not given any songs as good as what Sinatra had in Higher and Higher.Frank's role there did not call for any great acting and neither does Fisher's here. Eddie's a likable enough fellow, the son of the head of a department store who has the idea that Reynolds is an unwed mother.How he got that idea? Like in Bachelor Mother where Ginger Rogers did the same thing, Reynolds is on her lunch break and sees an abandoned baby on the steps of a foundling home. Taking such pity on it, she takes it with her. Probably this being Christmas time definitely helped in the sentiment department.Before long everyone just assumes it's her kid, no matter what she says and does so she has to go with the flow. RKO did give Eddie and Debbie a nice supporting cast that includes Adolphe Menjou as his father and Una Merkel as her landlady. Tommy Noonan almost steals the film as Debbie's officious co-worker. Bundle Of Joy is a good enough film to spend some time during the holiday season watching. Which I did and am not sorrier for the experience.

If it wasn't for the professional ease DEBBIE REYNOLDS displays in almost any role she plays, BUNDLE OF JOY would rank among the most forgettable romantic comedies of all time.And this is true, even though she's surrounded by pros like TOMMY NOONAN (as an ambitious but overly flirtatious floor-walker) and ADOLPHE MENJOU (as a man who wishes he was the grandpa of the cute baby boy). And in the middle of this mess, is a weak performance by EDDIE FISHER, clearly in need of comic timing and finesse, especially since the lines he's given to speak are slightly short of ridiculous. His department store musical number at the film's start is an embarrassment to watch, clumsily staged and performed.Director Norman Taurog is to blame for not being able to put any life into this retread of a GINGER ROGERS/David NIVEN/CHARLES COBURN film called BACHELOR MOTHER. The story is not the only handicap. The songs are third rate, even though Fisher and Reynolds deliver them in an appropriate style. Only one of them is a remotely catchy tune called "How I Love My Pretty Baby".Obviously this is the kind of story of mistaken identifies that someone like Norman Krasna could write in his sleep (too bad he wasn't summoned to help with the script), but it's played in such uninspired fashion by Fisher and most of the cast (including the usually reliable Adolphe Menjou, Melville Cooper and Bill Goodwin), that it falls flat in injecting any real wit or humor into the contrived situations.Summing up: Debbie deserved better than this. Both she and Fisher appear to be completely clueless as to what a dud this really is.