Stanley Ford leads an idyllic bachelor life. He is a nationally syndicated cartoonist whose Bash Brannigan series provides him with a luxury townhouse and a full-time valet, Charles. When he wakes up the morning after the night before - he had attended a friend's stag party - he finds that he is married to the very beautiful woman who popped out of the cake - and who doesn't speak a word of English. Despite his initial protestations, he comes to like married life and even changes his cartoon character from a super spy to a somewhat harried husband.
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Reviews
Very Cool!!!
This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place
Sorry, this movie sucks
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
The confirmed bachelor Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon) is a successful cartoonist of the comic strip Bash Brannigan published in 463 newspaper. He lives in Manhattan with his butler Charles (Terry-Thomas), who is proud of his master´s lifestyle. One day, Stanley attends a bachelor party where he drinks too much. On the next morning, there is a ravishing Italian blonde (Virna Lisi) naked in his bed and soon he learns that he got married with her last night. Stanley heads to his lawyer´s office to divorce Mrs. Ford but his lawyer Harold Lampson (Eddie Mayehoff) advises that it is not an easy task. Stanley´s life turns upside-down, and he plots to murder his wife. When Mrs. Ford learns his intention, she vanishes and Stanley is accused of murdering his wife and hiding her body. What will happen to him?"How to Murder Your Wife" is a funny 1965 comedy that makes the male viewer laugh of the situations. Jack Lemmon performs a confirmed bachelor and male chauvinist. Virna Lisi is extremely beautiful and sexy and disturbs his controlled life. The moralist conclusion ruins the storyline and is absolutely inconsistent to Stanley Ford´s behavior. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Como Matar Sua Esposa" ("How to Murder Your Wife")
Oh Dear, go at the end of the reviews and you will see the feminist reviews blaming this movie for all the women's suffering of the world, or even being gay, or simply illogical in some aspects. Now if like me you are a relatively happy married fellow with some basic desire to be respected in our masculinity, if you see no gay tendency for having a butler or for going to a male only gym and massage session (like many Asian gentlemen still indulge in), and if you see with both happiness and inquietude your tummy increasing from eating your wife's delicious food (yes, it still happens that women can cook and care), then you will enjoy it! I really enjoy the idea of a gentleman club, with healthy gym and a bit of a drinks later. It would be such a relief from our daily concerns, it would allow some socializing and contrary to what some ill-intended feminists may think, a no-lady-accepted club is the guarantee to wives that their husband does not get miscarried by extra-marital adventures. Allowing men to go there, only once a week, would be beneficial to everyone. Of course it will not happen: men have to baby-sit, cook, work hard, help to the house-core, and are only sometimes allow to watch a stupid game on TV while eating a popcorn bag and drinking a cheap beer. The movie depicts the time of good old fellows, talking civilized English, drinking a chilled martini, and singing good men songs while drunk instead of vomiting obscenities out of a bar. Let us go back to this good old time, which was not good for everyone... but let us enjoy it, just once, and laugh about it!
The success of Pillow Talk in 1959 ushered in a new era of sophisticated comedies, sexier than the ones of the 40s and usually set in upscale Manhattan. Many of these were actually more clever than funny (mostly because they tried to be tasteful and who really wants that in a farce?). This one still stands up today, and to repeated viewings.Bachelor and successful cartoonist Jack Lemmon gets drunk at a stag party and inadvertently marries beautiful Virna Lisi, who then proceeds to turn him into the classic emasculated husband at the urging of her 'well-meaning' female friends. His response is to use his cartoon strip to play out a fantasy murder. Things get complicated when the wife disappears and everybody thinks he did her in for real!Typical for the genre, the central situation is pretty far-fetched. Anybody who finds himself accidentally married to Virna Lisi should invest in lottery tickets, because he's on a lucky streak. And Lemmon's attachment to his New York bachelor lifestyle seems a bit quaint and dated when viewed from the post-sexual revolution world.Yet, the actors sell the contrived story well, with Terry Thomas being especially fun in the role of a rather misogynistic butler who eggs on Lemmon's murder fantasy. And to be fair the story line is well-worked out as a comedy farce, albeit along 60s sit-com lines. Ultimately it all works because it's just plain funny, with lots of witty material in evidence, especially during Lemmon's murder trial at the end, where he manages to put women and the institution of marriage on trial with him. Recommended.
The comic style of this film is reflected in Jack Lemmon's cartoons; in fact, he creates his comic-strip character, Brash Brannigan, in his own likeness and then tries to influence his own life by changing Brash's. A brilliant narrative trick. The last time I saw this, adult life lay ahead like a kind of exam. Orange juice in the shower, and beautiful blonds popping out of cakes seemed to be the goal. This film was like a comedic case study in lifestyle management, a blueprint to be stored away - just in case. I liked all the ideas here: the perfect bachelor life, waking up and finding yourself married, the club where you can't be reached - and it's still likable. Lemmon shows terrific timing with his rapid use of language and gesture that has an amazing flexibility to it - as a technique that is surely unique to him. Terry-Thomas is splendid and quite solid in contrast. Of course we scoff at the idea of a cartoonist living in a townhouse in the middle of Manhatten with a butler, but that's a metaphor for the end of the old days. The Brash Brannigan shenanigans at the beginning were a little overdone though, and the courtroom scene near the end is more than preposterous - it's post-posterous; the whole murder trial device is weakened by the fact that we know what actually happened - much better if there'd been some doubt in our minds also as to whether he had killed his wife - hard to understand how George Axelrod's script missed that obvious point.Still, the humour tootles along nicely: the gloppita-gloppita machine; the goofballs that make your wife dance on the table - Brrrrrrrrrrp! - and then collapse - Blapppp!; delicious Virna Lisi; and those in-your-dreams lifestyle tips - it's like re-reading an old favourite comic strip.
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