Waste of time

Absolutely Fantastic

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The four brats in this movie are appalling. Both parents are totally out of control. They need that nanny of a recent TV series. Seriously, the parents need some education. Besides, who nowadays have four children in ten years? What college graduate woman nowadays defers her career and her sanity to make all those Quick Quaker Oats of three-time (I saw them) product placement? Another product placement was North American Van Lines. I love oatmeal, but I always buy the Brand-X version.Niven was very good. His character became obnoxious, however. He did not appreciate his self-sacrificing wife, although both, as mentioned, needed coursework in childcare and loving discipline. Niven's attention to the bimbo (Paige) was appalling, and her attention to him predated later decades of women asking men out, asking men to marry them, etc. You would never have caught Deborah (Paige's character) dishing out the oatmeal. She may have smacked the kid, however, not putting him in the cage. Nowadays (again, I am harping on 2013), the kid would have used his smarts to call the police and put her in jail for child abuse.Patsy Kelly was good to see, although I wished she had appeared in greater space of time. It was also good to see Spring Byington. I thought her pet shop was just too divine. Richard Haydn was good to see, also, he of Sound of Music appearance.Doris was just wonderful, as always. I thought the dog was Tramp from My Three Sons (was that dog Tramp?), though his name was Hobo. My Three Sons was represented here, anyway, by Stanley Livingston (Chip). I loved Doris singing and dancing, and having the lead in the local play was shortchanged to me the audience. I hoped the finale would have her in the actual play, and not just at rehearsal where her husband got hopping angry.It took me tons of decades to see this movie. Thank you, TCM. I always remembered the theme song.Inside reference: Doris talked to her husband about having a possible affair with Rock Hudson. That was priceless. I think Rock was more famous than Janis Paige, IMHO.This was a very enjoyable movie. It spoke for much of the time period, with frustrated, unfulfilled women plus out-of-control children. I think the children needed the sedatives, however.

It took four sessions in front of the DVD player to get through watching PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES, about as bland a domestic comedy as I've ever watched. I'm a big Doris Day fan but this was the point in her career when she started making some family films that just didn't hit the mark.The cast is certainly pleasant enough, but the theme of boys being boys is overdone after the first twenty minutes. David Niven has the patience of a saint to put up with the nonsense forced on him here. Neither he nor Doris are able to overcome the inadequacies of an uninspired script that turns out to be a hodge-podge of ideas left over from GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE (about a house in the country) and MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE, self-explanatory.To her credit, Day performs with natural ease throughout and even manages to toss off the vapid title song without losing her dignity. Best in support are Janis Paige as a sexy temptress who tries to lure Niven into her clutches and Richard Haydn who seems to be preparing for his subsequent role in THE SOUND OF MUSIC as a theatrical man who knows his way around a script.None of it is very funny, even with Patsy Kelly as a housemaid. The fluffy dog, Hobo, has a genuinely funny scene or two and there's the youngest child kept in a cage who steals a couple of scenes without even trying. But all in all, this one taxes the patience of anyone who develops a bad case of deja vu, having seen it all before.Summing up: Has the flavor of a TV situation comedy that goes on long beyond the half-hour mark. Banal best describes the weak script. The Jean Kerr book must have been mildly amusing.

You're glad they made movies like "Please Don't Eat The Daisies" alright, simply to prove there was a time people were more innocent. Sitting through it is another matter.The central problem with "Please Don't Eat The Daisies" as it stands today is that it suffers from a major case of indecision: Does it want to be about a theater critic who gets a big head, or does it want to be about a Manhattan mom with four sons who finds a new home in Westchester County? Doris Day stars doing what she does best, throwing off clever one-liners with a maternal glow, doing a little bit of singing, and standing by her man, in this case David Niven as theater critic Lawrence Mackay, who probably doesn't deserve her but as played by the winning Niven keeps our sympathies enough to make us happy he convinces her otherwise.Mackay is quite taken by his new role as the Frank Rich of Mayor Wagner-era Broadway, but she's worried his becoming an influential quipmeister has made him mean, a candidate for a ride on the "down-a-lator" as expressed by a producer who used to be Mackay's friend until one of Mackay's catty reviews sundered their relationship. The producer, played by Richard Hadyn in much the same jaded manner he brought to his impresario role in "The Sound Of Music" five years later, accelerates Mackay's notoriety by having the starlet of his latest play, "Mme. Fantan," slap Mackay across the face for the benefit of a newspaper photographer after he disses her performance.There's a great idea for a story here, about a critic coming up against the egos of himself and others, but unfortunately the result doesn't give Day much to do. Niven is neither unfaithful to her nor really all that nasty a critic. Instead of trying to make the story work better, which admittedly would risk running against the grain of a Doris Day comedy, the film throws in a subplot, about the couple and their four sons moving up the Hudson River to the bucolic suburb of Hooton and the resulting mild turmoil that causes. Thus, the entire second half of the film feels as awkwardly tacked on as the musical numbers Day performs in the final third of the programme.It's all rather stupid, yes, but winsome, too, in that nice way that makes one nostalgic for the early 1960s. The scenery is attractively shot. The supporting actors are fun. Of the Day numbers, one, "Any Way The Wind Blows," is a terrific number with a busy bassline and some nice dipping harmonies that recalls Elvis Presley's "King Creole," fetchingly performed by Day and members of the cast as the "Hooton Holler Players." Never mind that groaner of a name, it's a good routine. The other number, the title song sung by Day and a merry band of children, should have been cut but for the fact it's a Doris Day movie and a drippy song with a kiddie chorus was what her audience wanted.The same can be said for the whole movie. "Please Don't Eat The Daisies" is charming in a way films wouldn't dare be today. The dialogue is unnaturally whipsmart Neil-Simonesque, even when it's Day talking to one of her sons ("All he does is eat and sleep." "He's a dog. What d'ya want from him, blank verse?"). The youngest boy is clearly overdubbed by a woman with a cutesy voice, saying "Cokee Cola" as he drops water bags on people in a way that's supposed to suggest Tom Sawyer, not lawsuits. The dog jumps into Niven's arms at the sight of a squirrel, and he raises his magnificent eyebrows as only David Niven can at the idea of finding himself in a lightweight suburban farce.Day makes you glad you stopped by, a suburbanite dream in her snug Capri slacks who finds the humor in every scene. Limited, yes, but very good in her genre, enough to make a film like this at least intermittently entertaining. She and Niven do play very well off each other. Like Michael E. Barrett wrote here in another review, the scene of them in the restaurant together after Niven has had his face slapped is a terrifically acted sequence, underplayed well by both stars.Unfortunately, the rest of film doesn't rise to that same level of subtlety. Instead, she does her suburban mom thing while he plays the non-vicious critic with a vicious reputation, until at the end we are asked to pretend the twain come to meet and all is resolved. It doesn't, but the nicest thing to be said for "Please Don't Eat The Daisies" is that it's so genial it makes you willing to pretend otherwise.

Please Don't Eat The Daisies (1960) is a little comedy study that is one year too late in celebrating the 50s sexual stereotype of 'the little woman'. It stars David Niven and Doris Day as Lawrence and Kay McKay. He's a Drama critic. She just wants to be a housewife. Their happy, if cramped, in a Manhattan apartment with four sons, David (Charles Herbert), Gabriel (Stanley Livingston), George (Flip Mark) and Adam (Baby Gellert). However, at the behest of Kay, the family departs the elegance of New York for suburbia and clean living. Well, almost.Seems Lawrence can't or won't entirely leave the Big Apple behind. That his work precludes a complete departure from the social depravity of Broadway stage door Johnnies and scheming starlets is an angle played up when it appears as though Lawrence has decided to sack Kay and family for the lovely and flirtatious Deborah Vaughn (Janis Paige). Complications ensue as long time friends Suzie Robinson (Spring Byington) and Alfred North (Richard Haydn) get involved though only manage to make a simple case of mistaken judgment develop into a full blown comedy of errors. And then, of course, there's the whole mix up with Reverend McQuarry (John Harding) that begs to be reconsidered.Based on Jean Kerr's humorous novel, ably adapted by Isobel Lennart, director Charles Walters directs with his usual panache, but is decidedly saddled with, and forced to do damage control over, Niven's central performance as the blundering Lawrence. Honestly, the poor man's made to look ridiculous around every corner – an ill fit for one of the most accomplished and adroit British actors of his time. Day manages to come up with some winning moments, but she too has seem better days and far better material. This film perhaps foreshadows the sort of 'reluctant domestic' role that the rest of her tenure with Rock Hudson would carry over. Apparently, and despite its overall entertainment value shortcomings, there is something to be said for timing. 'Please Don't Eat The Daisies' played to solid box office and even found renewed life as a television sitcom starring Brian Keith. Go figure.The anamorphic transfer from Warner Bros. is just average. Colors are dated and sometimes even muddy. Blacks are not very deep or solid. Whites are generally clean but slightly yellow. Shadow and contrast levels are disappointing. Save Day's rendition of the title song, the audio sounds rather unnatural and strident. Dialogue is decidedly forward sounding with no spread across the channels. The only extra is a theatrical trailer.