I can't imagine there's a much better example than this film of how amazingly marvelous Doris Day could be. I'd enjoy watching her reupholster a sofa.
Beverly Boyer (Doris Day) is a happy if somewhat harried housewife. She's married to pediatrician Gerald Boyer (James Garner), has two rambunctious children (Brian Nash and Kym Karath, who couldn't have been more stereotypically "funny" movie kids if they'd had laugh tracks surgically implanted in them), bottles her own ketchup and is generally satisfied with her life. When Gerald helps a middle-aged couple conceive, he and Beverly are invited to a party where they meet the middle-aged couple's loud and crotchety father (Reginald Owen). He owns a company that manufactures Happy Soap and is so charmed by Beverly, he hires her to do a TV commercial for the product. The public falls in love with Beverly's awkward honestly and her career as a product spokeswoman takes off like a rocket. That career takes her out of just being a "doctor's wife", with hilarious complications (and I'm not using the world hilarious sarcastically). His wife's success doesn't sit all that well with Gerald, however, and he comes up with a plan to get Beverly knocked up so she has to quit working. The movie concludes with the middle-aged couple having their baby in trying circumstances and the incident pushing Beverly and Gerald to resolve their contentious struggle.
I'm not sure there's any way to overstate how wonderful Doris Day is in this movie. For the first three-fourths of the film she is the center of the story and is tremendously funny and appealing. Even when other aspects of the film feel a little contrived and phony (like her movie kids who always have something "funny" to say), Day always appears natural, real and believable as wife, mother and budding TV pitchlady. In this film, Day shows us the essence of the movie star. You just want to keep watching her, independent of whether the rest of the movie is good or not.
Which isn't to say the rest of The Thrill of It All isn't good. It's light hearted and a bit slapsticky, but it's well-written and fast moving. Some of the comedy gags are a bit over the top but most are right on target. The rest of the cast can't match Day, of course, but they're all good in their own right. There's a mischievous edge to most of the script, as though Carl Reiner understood how touchy the subject matter of this story could be in 1963 and had fun seeing how much humor he could wring out of it.
Now, the last quarter of the movie does focus more on Gerald Boyer and it sort of grinds along until its overly melodramatic conclusion. James Garner does well, but while Gerald may have been a vaguely sympathetic character in 1963 by today's standards he's pretty much a sexist pig. That the movie largely condones his selfish concern about his wife being there for him can be a bit grating and the things he does to Beverly to try and get her to quit her career are just downright mean.
Those minor quibbles don't detract from the first three-quarters of The Thrill of It All being about as much fun as any movie I've ever seen.
Beverly Boyer (Doris Day) is a happy if somewhat harried housewife. She's married to pediatrician Gerald Boyer (James Garner), has two rambunctious children (Brian Nash and Kym Karath, who couldn't have been more stereotypically "funny" movie kids if they'd had laugh tracks surgically implanted in them), bottles her own ketchup and is generally satisfied with her life. When Gerald helps a middle-aged couple conceive, he and Beverly are invited to a party where they meet the middle-aged couple's loud and crotchety father (Reginald Owen). He owns a company that manufactures Happy Soap and is so charmed by Beverly, he hires her to do a TV commercial for the product. The public falls in love with Beverly's awkward honestly and her career as a product spokeswoman takes off like a rocket. That career takes her out of just being a "doctor's wife", with hilarious complications (and I'm not using the world hilarious sarcastically). His wife's success doesn't sit all that well with Gerald, however, and he comes up with a plan to get Beverly knocked up so she has to quit working. The movie concludes with the middle-aged couple having their baby in trying circumstances and the incident pushing Beverly and Gerald to resolve their contentious struggle.
I'm not sure there's any way to overstate how wonderful Doris Day is in this movie. For the first three-fourths of the film she is the center of the story and is tremendously funny and appealing. Even when other aspects of the film feel a little contrived and phony (like her movie kids who always have something "funny" to say), Day always appears natural, real and believable as wife, mother and budding TV pitchlady. In this film, Day shows us the essence of the movie star. You just want to keep watching her, independent of whether the rest of the movie is good or not.
Which isn't to say the rest of The Thrill of It All isn't good. It's light hearted and a bit slapsticky, but it's well-written and fast moving. Some of the comedy gags are a bit over the top but most are right on target. The rest of the cast can't match Day, of course, but they're all good in their own right. There's a mischievous edge to most of the script, as though Carl Reiner understood how touchy the subject matter of this story could be in 1963 and had fun seeing how much humor he could wring out of it.
Now, the last quarter of the movie does focus more on Gerald Boyer and it sort of grinds along until its overly melodramatic conclusion. James Garner does well, but while Gerald may have been a vaguely sympathetic character in 1963 by today's standards he's pretty much a sexist pig. That the movie largely condones his selfish concern about his wife being there for him can be a bit grating and the things he does to Beverly to try and get her to quit her career are just downright mean.
Those minor quibbles don't detract from the first three-quarters of The Thrill of It All being about as much fun as any movie I've ever seen.