A brilliant film that helped define a genre

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

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Claustrophobic and dull, this film version of a forgotten Broadway play is nearly a disaster for all concerned: leads Doris Day and Richard Widmark have absolutely no chemistry, and director Gene Kelly adds no oomph to an absurd premise. As a married couple trying to have a baby, Widmark and Day are endlessly cheerful, often frantic, and excessively cutsie pie. They decide after failed attempts in her getting pregnant (she does everything but order him to make love to her) to try adoption, and in comes the sultry adoption agent Gia Scala who detests Widmark and his neighbor pal Gig Young from their first meeting, yet shows up nowhere out of the blue to announce that she's attracted to Widmark. I've always been of the belief that just because the written word in on the page as dialog doesn't mean that it's true. The film is presented as light and fluffy, but other than a few incidental lines is completely unfunny. Besides the forgettable title song (which has the same beat as the same year's theme from "The Blob"), there's the headache inducing "Run Away, Skidaddle, Skidoo", which had me cringing from the moment that Day began singing it while dancing with Widmark at an extremely boring cocktail party. For a film to be truly enjoyable, you have to be interested in the characters you're watching, and the only emotion I had from watching them was the desire to reach through a screen and put muzzles on all of them. This film makes the sound of nails on chalkboards preferable. Unlike other bad movies, this isn't even campy, just cringing.

This film has an astonishingly ludicrous, unbelievable plot. Doris Day and Richard Widmark are unable to conceive while ol' reliable neighbor Gig Young (as Dick Pepper) has kid after kid, despite having (arguably) the biggest substance abuse problem on the block. With all the single beds and double shots, it's a wonder.Anyway, an adoption agency finds a baby for the childless Day/Widmark pair. Mr. Widmark is convinced he actually fathered the child they find, during a drunken one-night-stand... It gets worse. Ms. Day recognizes the newly adopted baby as Mr. Widmark's, and storms out on her bicycle! The movie makes absolutely no sense. Day and Widmark are terrible parents. Widmark also sings, by the way, at a cocktail party and to the baby. Be warned! Won't reveal the film's climax, but it should be easy to guess… ** The Tunnel of Love (11/21/58) Gene Kelly ~ Doris Day, Richard Widmark, Gig Young, Gia Scala

I saw this movie on TV when I was young, about ten or eleven. I thought then it was funny and adult in the sense of being a bit dirty and knowing. I saw it again yesterday. I am now between thirty and death too. "The Tunnel of Love" is a time capsule, but a bemusing one. The humour is degrading to the female characters, especially the wife trying to get pregnant, the constantly pregnant wife next door, and the adoption agency investigator who is immediately judged by her looks. I felt with the investigator when she complained to the husband that Gig Young's character made a pass at her five minutes after meeting her. Almost as bad as the nudge nudge pinch pinch attitude of the neighbor and his advice that his happily married friend should bag a babe is the total lack of common sense in the characters' actions. Why does the insulted investigator drive back to make her own pass at the husband? Why does the husband conclude that he has fathered the investigator's baby when it turns out that she is married? (And before this is revealed at the end, the audience and the husband haven't got a clue that the investigator has a husband herself.)Why does the husband give her a check for a thousand dollars without asking her more questions- like how he can be be so certain that he's the one who got her pregnant? Why is the wife next door constantly getting "off to the races" if the husband's sole contribution to parenthood is telling their kids to shut up before he ships them off to boarding school? If you're fascinated by 50s attitudes toward sex, "The Tunnel of Love" is a revealing portrait of the sort of humour that the artist character might highlight in a cartoon to sell to Playboy or one of the more downmarket men's magazines of the era. Behind the winking and the flirting of the actress in the party scene there's a stream of melancholy, especially in the story of the West Point student in his second year whose family has decided that he will marry his pregnant girlfriend: as Gig Young snaps, he'll have bars on his shoulders and a toddler in his lap. All those martinis and double whiskies and Young's box of tranquilizers that he pops like popcorn point at the terror and sadness behind the whoopie. The husband's dinner with the investigator says it all: he has a bottle of ale and a lamb chop from the children's menu. All of the characters are children themselves. Thank God times have changed.

Maybe I'm a bit protective of my favorite actress, but I have seen one too many movies where Doris Day is intentionally deceived by the man she loves. Usually Miss Day is dooped in light-hearted fun, but I almost felt as victimized as she in "Tunnel of Love." I did not enjoy this movie one bit.