Undescribable Perfection

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Excellent but underrated film

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This movie is too absurd for words. I find it really upsetting that Debbie Reynolds and Dick Van Dyke two stars known for their great physical humor and perkiness are totally unable to breathe real life into their parts. It is not humor nor sarcasm nor social commentary, nor drama. There is no understanding of the characters and their motivations.What impressed me as one who handled many divorces is the partly believable scenes in the lawyers' office and the courtroom. Non lawyers will think this is satire of what goes on. In fact it grossly understates what goes on in the court system in a divorce. It is a very messy process that often takes years to unravel. It causes unbelievable harm to the children and both spouses. Both parties are made to feel like criminals. It also largely impoverishes both spouses and prevents them from going on with their lives. The no fault system that now exists does little to heal the pain. There are two scenes which take place in a lawyers office which is called mediation and in the courtroom. What actually goes on is a lot of screaming by the clients about the unfairness and lying that occurs. What is not understood by the lay public is that their anger is extremely painful to the lawyers and judges as well. Lawyers are also traumatized by the bloody duel and deal with it by acting civilly to each other (hopefully). The lawyers' social chit chat is their way to break the tension. It prevents the lawyers from going over the deep end.

It seems that not everybody remembers the world in 1967.To begin with, there was no such thing as no-fault divorce. A divorce had to involve one "guilty" party, and one "innocent" party. Two "guilty" parties would just be blown off with "You two deserve each other." And it was regarded as standard good manners for the man to offer himself up as "guilty", unless the woman was a complete slut or psycho. (See "The Gay Divorcée" for an example of a man who /doesn't/ follow this social rule, because he's a pig.)Now, also during this period, the usual rule was that the wife got the kids, and the wife and kids were entitled to be just as well off as they had been before the divorce. (Remember, as far as the Law was concerned, she and they were officially innocent victims of the Big Bad Man.) So alimony could be very high indeed.As to her getting a job....There was no such thing as professional daycare. If a divorced woman were poor, she could probably leave the kids with a neighbor, because poor folks have been doing that for thousands of years, but for a middle-class divorced woman to do that would have been regarded as shameless freeloading.There were relatively few jobs for women, and even fewer that paid decently. A woman could be a secretary, but shorthand and typing take years of practice. (There were no personal computers then; few people could type except for writers and secretaries.) And secretaries didn't make much more than minimum wage, anyway. The same for stitchers in clothing factories (America had clothing factories back then). Beautician? Cleaning woman? Hotel maid? Nurse? None of them paid all that well. There were a handful of woman doctors, lawyers, and the like, but the closest pointer to the future was that there have always been quite a few women in computer programming. But you couldn't just walk in and ask for a programming job if you'd never done it before.In short, this movie makes the usual exaggerations you expect in a comedy, but it is nowhere near "preposterous" or "ridiculously unrealistic". It's pretty solidly grounded in 1967 reality.Now, on the other hand, I can't say I like the movie all that much. I guess I'm too romantic to take divorce as a joke. But the performances are sound, and I have to say that Van Dyke and Reynolds both had guts to tackle this script at all. Both of them have always been typecast as "lovable".

This movie is extremely dated and was undoubtedly unrealistic upon release, no matter how hip the filmmakers thought they were being. Husbands impoverished by alimony and child support while their ex-wives live in the lap of luxury? Please. Post-divorce, women were (and are) the ones most likely to have financial struggles, due to the continuing inequities in society, but they have also proved themselves much less dependent than the women in this movie, going to heroic heights in trying to support themselves and their children. Of course, this movie never acknowledges that maybe a divorced woman could get a job! Actually, for all its melodrama (which is enjoyable in itself), 1945's Mildred Pierce is more realistic in this regard--after Mildred and her husband split up, she goes to work as a waitress and then (you go, girl!) opens her own restaurant. At least filmmakers Lear and Yorkin dealt more intelligently with social issues a few years later in All in the Family. This movie does have an excellent cast, down to the supporting players, but they deserve better. Sitcom great Dick Van Dyke never had much luck with movies, and Jean Simmons, a wonderful actress, made few films that were worthy of her talents. Debbie Reynolds and Jason Robards, happily, were in many better movies.

The film fails because it could have easily been made into a drama with some twists.Dick Van Dyke has some actual dramatic moments as Richard, a non-college graduate whose promotion has put a strain on a 17 year marriage to Debbie Reynolds. Ditto for the Reynolds character as well.Their marriage actually falters because of their friends, attorneys and marriage counselor, all of whom literally drive them to divorce.The film does take on some comical tones when it is shown that alimony is so high that an ex-husband, nicely played by Jason Robards, tries to marry off his wife so that he can be rid of that money responsibility.The film is all-too predictable. You know that some sort of reconciliation will be reached by Van Dyke and Reynolds just before their one year divorce decree becomes final.Van Johnson appears as a bachelor caught up in Robards'scheme to marry off his ex-wife Jean Simmons.