HONEYMOON HOTEL (1964)

Jay (Robert Morse) and Ross (Robert Goulet) are Manhattan bachelor pad roomies. Jay is settling down, set to marry Cynthia that afternoon, while Ross continues his playboy ways, having almost forgotten his best man duties because he's been necking with an Amway saleswoman who stops by the pad twice a week—not to mention flirting at work with a totsy named Sherry (Jill St. John). But at the high society wedding, Cynthia gets jealous when she overhears Jay talking with Ross about a former girlfriend and she calls off the wedding. The morose Jay is stuck with two tickets to an expensive Caribbean resort so he and Ross decide to go themselves—without realizing that the hotel caters only to honeymooning couples. That’s the one joke the movie keeps flogging, as promised by its title; employees and other guests keep assuming the two men are honeymooning together (a joke that has pretty much lost its outrageousness over the past few years), and both men are frustrated by the abundance of women in bikinis who are off-limits because they're newlyweds.

But fret not, other naughty situations arise: 1) Ross discovers there is one single woman on the premises: Lynn (Nancy Kwan), the social director, who it just so happens is friends with Cynthia and was present at the called-off wedding. Ross starts an effort to bed her, and he seems to be having some luck until she sees Jay who lets it slip about Ross's promiscuous ways. She then plots to make both men look foolish; 2) Ross's married boss Mr. Sampson (Keenan Wynn) takes up with Sherry and the two of them wind up at the hotel, posing as honeymooners; 3) the suspicious Mrs. Sampson follows her husband to the resort and soon, a farcical game of "Hide Sherry" commences; 4) Cynthia arrives, having decided to give Jay another chance, but with all the shenanigans involving Sherry and Lynn, she has second (third, I guess) thoughts.

With all that plot, you'd think this would be a sparkling 60s sex farce that would be fun to watch even today. You would be wrong. First, as I hinted above, our sexual mores have changed so much that this feels more like a Disney sitcom than a sophisticated adult entertainment. There's also the rampant and unfunny sexism on display, especially in the way that the Jill St. John character is treated (though the actress herself, pictured at right with Goulet, gives the best performance in the film). Goulet and Morse, both making leading man debuts after achieving Broadway success, are badly directed; Morse is sluggish and Goulet artificial. The presence of Asian actress Nancy Kwan is interesting, in that she and Goulet are probably among the earliest examples of an interracial couple being at the heart of a romantic comedy, but Kwan is just as poorly used as the male leads, though she does get a nice but short dance bit. Anne Helm is unmemorable as Cynthia, and Bernard Fox (Bewitched's Dr. Bombay) and Elsa Lanchester have thankless supporting roles. I did laugh a few times here and there, and St. John turns a rather lame line into a high point: early on, when Ross promises to take her to the Caribbean, she replies chirpingly, "That’s in the Great Lakes, isn't it?" She also gets the best bit of physical comedy when she walks into a sliding glass door (I actually laughed out loud). But I would only recommend this to fans of the stars or to 60s sex farce completists. [TCM]