If a Man Answers

This film was remarkably amusing. The acting was certainly adequate to the task of a light comedy, and the scenes had a sort of fluffy chemistry that kept me laughing. Although this 50's flick makes a good attempt at equality between newlyweds Chantal (Sandra Dee) and Eugene (Bobby Darin), I still felt the ending erred on the side of the female, balanced only by the portrayal of vamp Tina (Stefanie Powers). If the film had been more about individuals, I'm not sure I would have worried so much about the battle of the sexes, but as it stood, the male and female characters seemed to line up into teams - the mother helping her daughter, and the fathers helping their son, each gender keeping secrets and using strategies against the other.

The coloring and camera style smacked strongly of the fifties, and I felt a little as if I'd stepped into some thick fantasy in chiffon and chintz, but that seems to be a characteristic of the age/genre.

As a relative feminist in some areas, seeing a woman treat her husband like a dog appalled, even though it all seemed quite reasonable in the film. Truthfully, it's possible that wives treat their pets better than they treat their husbands, hence Dr. Laura's book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands: 
A revolutionary book in this age of gender inequalities and misinformation.

The idea of intentionally making a man jealous also seems unusually cruel, although Sandra Dee played it with sensitivity, and Bobby Darin took it like a man. Again, I recommend this film for fifties fans.