Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

"Forever, Darling" is a 1956 comedy-romance with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, It's also a nice story about how things change in the first years of marriage. And, how people can salvage the love they have to make it last a lifetime. Lucy is visited by her guardian angel who tells her that her marriage is on the skids. Unless she does something to save it, they will wind up following the paths of others whom the couple know who no longer have any romance. Lucy plays Susan Vega and Desi is Lorenzo "Larry" Vega who is a scientist-researcher. James Mason plays Susan's guardian angel.Those who might expect some zany antics that Ball made her signature trade in her long-running TV sitcoms may be disappointed. The star kept that zaniness for her TV shows. Her films mostly have a nice blend of witty dialog, some crazy antics and other comedic situations; This film also has a dramatic element concerning marriages. Ball and Arnaz ended their marriage four years after this film. That' also when The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour on TV ended. The two had been together on that and the initial sitcom, I Love Lucy. Two years later, Lucy began her third TV series, The Lucy Show, which ran for seven seasons.This won't have one rolling with laughter, but it will bring some chuckles. It's a nice comedy romance, in which we get to see Lucy mostly outside her trademark Lucy role. The zaniness takes over toward the very end. Susan decides to go with Larry on a field trip – a real field trip, camping out, to test a mosquito insecticide that he had been developing for five years. Here are a couple samples of funny dialog. The first night out, Larry turns off the lantern in the tent. Susan, "This is some of the darkest dark I've ever seen. Larry, if you put the lantern on again, I think I'll sleep better." Larry, "Look, Susan, it's dark in our bedroom at home and you sleep all right there." Susan, "Well, there's a streetlight outside our bedroom at home. Boy, when it gets dark in a tent, it doesn't mess around."In the morning they get into a raft on a lagoon. Susan has to row while Larry checks the water for mosquito larvae. Larry is impatient with Susan's rowing and she replies, "Us galley slaves don't row very well unless we're whipped." Later, after several mishaps, Larry begins chewing her out, in his native Cuban language. Susan, "If you're gonna bawl me out, bawl me out in English." He switches to English, and she says, "Never mind, go back to Spanish."

This is not a total failure, as the three principles do mingle well, and they do try. Mason, the most dramatically successful of the three actors, actually could play comedy on occasion (think of him as the "chubby chasing" old goat in GEORGY GIRL) but his best work was in drama. In fact two years before this film his best remembered performance (as Norman Main in A STAR IS BORN) ended with that classic drowning suicide. Hardly a chuckle in that - though to be fair the complete film was to spoof some swashbucklers that Main was making).Susan and Lorenzo Vega are an up-scale married couple (he is a chemist working on an insecticide) who have been married five years, but who seem to be drifting apart. The near explosion occurs when they are having dinner with two of Susan's friends (Nathalie Schaefer and Ralph Dunke) who are a wee bit too snobby and complacent for Lorenzo to really enjoy the company of. And since he is preoccupied with the deadline of testing his new powerful insecticide, he is not in the mood for their nonsense. He explodes at the dinner, causing them to leave in anger. Susan is also angry as they are her friends. So Lorenzo and she have a spat, and he does not sleep that night.Enter Darling, the Guardian Angel of Susan. This is Mason. At first Susan is amazed that he resembles James Mason, but it soon develops that his features are not really like Mason's but she sees Mason because the actor is her favorite actor. He is trying to convince her that she has to work harder to save her marriage with Lorenzo. Susan has to try to be more supportive of her husband.The complications that develop somewhat resemble another film of a few years earlier: THE BISHOP'S WIFE. There the angel (Cary Grant) falls for the wife (Loretta Young) of the Bishop (David Niven) he is trying to correct the religious motivations of. Grant spends far too much time "entertaining" Young, until Niven becomes jealous - hardly the intention of the angel's boss. Here Darling is not pursuing his charge. Instead he is fighting her off for awhile because of the way she sees him. There is a cute moment when Lucy is watching a film starring Mason and sees herself replacing the heroine. The interesting thing is that the film is reminiscent of Mason's original acting fame as one of those men (like George Sanders and Eric Von Stroheim) you love to hate - the star who whipped the villainess to death in THE MAN IN GRAY, or the nasty uncle of the piano protégée in THE SEVENTH VEIL. He is a sheik who is mistreating a female prisoner (who of course is falling for him while he does so). As a spoof on Mason's background it is mildly good.Eventually he manages to get Susan back on track, leading to her going on the trek to Yosemite Park to test the new insecticide - to help her husband. And of course, being Lucille Ball, her attempts just drive Desi up the wall. It is a tolerable if unmemorable comedy. That is the best I can say for it. But it has some moments worth waiting for. And with it, we leave the last of the three Lucy-Desi films. A curious bunch. Their best work is still the television series.

Or "I Love Lucy, Episode Two: 'Forever Darling." This could very well be a first in more ways than one: two actors who had slogged through B-movies in unremarkable parts had by now become larger-than-life television stars due to their show, bought RKO Studios, converted it into Desilu, were beginning to produce other shows (who would go on to successes of their own), and to top it off, had broken the myth that television actors could not make the transition into the big screen. THE LONG, LONG TRAILER was proof of that and only bolstered "I Love Lucy" to greater heights. FOREVER DARLING was a way of cementing their TV personas in another feature film in which the same antics that had been the basis of every "Lucy" episode would be seen in a 90-minute movie while incorporating an element of Surrealist fantasy where James Mason makes his appearance as an Angel who intervenes in key moments throughout the film. It's an enjoyable little movie that doesn't try to pretend to be bigger than it is; lightning does not always strike twice, although here it just fails to hit its target dead-center because it essentially recycles much of the "I Love Lucy" stories. It is enjoyable, though.

This is a perfect example of how two great stars can make a bad film as a result of a very bad script. I love Lucy and Desi like everybody else, but getting through this movie is sheer torture. The fact that this movie has less than 50 votes indicates I'm not alone on this.