HOW SWEET IT IS! (1968)

In the middle of the afternoon, it appears that Grif (James Garner) has snuck into the bedroom of Jenny (Debbie Reynolds) and the two are having a matinee while her husband's out. Suddenly they hear someone enter the house and head upstairs. Surprise! Grif and Jenny are a married couple getting frisky in broad daylight, and it's their teenage son Davey who has interrupted things. He has teenager problems: his girlfriend Bootsie is going to spend the summer in Europe with a student group, and Davey wants to tag along. Jenny manages to get Grif, a photographer by trade, assigned to accompany the group to document the trip, and she decides to go along, renting a villa in France to stay at and provide a home base for Grif and Davey, and perhaps to get some canoodling time in with her husband. Unfortunately, on the ship over, they wind up in separate cabins, and when they sneak out at night to do some necking on the dark dock, they find out that many of the teenagers had the same plan. Grif and Davey head out with the tour group while Jenny heads to the villa only to find that her real estate agent cheated her and the rental is actually a private house belonging to a rich playboy named Phillipe (Maurice Ronet). They have their own meet-cute moment when she mistakes him for a servant. He tries to clear things up by letting her have the home for a few weeks since he says he won't be there for long. She accepts, then finds that he is in no hurry to leave the house. Meanwhile, Grif seems to be flirting a bit with a travel guide named Nancy. Misunderstandings pile up and things come to a farcical head one night when most of the characters descend on a brothel (with Jenny and her son winding up in a room together!). A happy return to America is in store for Grif and Jenny.

This is an interesting stab at making a vanilla sex comedy, titillating but not immoral. Garner and Reynolds are game as the leads, though I must admit I kept forgetting that the wife was Reynolds and not Doris Day. Though the film leads you to believe that Davey, a teen hippie in the making (or Hollywood's idea of one), will be a main character, he (Donald Losby) and his girlfriend are largely pushed aside once we get to Europe. Most of the fun is provided by supporting players. The quirkily handsome Maurice Ronet approaches the playboy role with a light touch. Marcel Dalio makes the most of his limited screen time as Ronet's Communist butler. Terry-Thomas has a cameo as the shady real estate agent. I quite enjoyed Paul Lynde popping up throughout as an officer on the ship who expresses shock at the sexy goings-on but is then caught in his own shenanigans at the brothel. Jerry Paris, who played Rob Petrie's neighbor on the Dick Van Dyke Show, directed and has a cameo, and the woman who played his wife Millie on the show, Ann Morgan Guilbert, has a small role as an ocean liner passenger. Ultimately, there are too many balls in the air here to make this totally successful, but it's good naughty Saturday afternoon fun. Pictured are Lynde and Guilbert.[TCM]