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Showing posts from September, 2012

Move Over, Darling

Doris Day and James Garner star in this remake of the 1930's screwball comedy My Favorite Wife which originally starred Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. Move Over, Darling gives its predecessor a delightful nod, and still updates the characterizations and situations for the decades-later rewrite. A woman, lost on an island for years while her children grow, returns from a heroic rescue on the day her husband declares her dead and remarries. The problem remains one-sided as she intercepts the honeymoon and pressures her husband to break it to the histrionic new bride. Things even out, though, when the poor bigamist learns that his wife wasn't alone on the island for all those years. She lived with a beefcake who's just as happy to disrupt the marriage and snag the faithful, returning wife. The original screwball paced itself more evenly, with a lengthy sine-curve of problems and resolutions until everyone finally reconciles. The update moved much more in the mountain-climbing p