Lemmon gives his usual sterling performance, although rather closer to the wisecracking, raffish roles that someone like, say, Tony Curtis would normally appear in, Novak shows that hourglass figure in a series of body hugging outfits, her strange Harlow-like eyebrows look out of place in a 60's film. Astaire shows immaculate timing and a nice line is self deprecation, letting Lemmon bounce the laughs off of him.
What undoes the film is the desperately phony "foggy London", the sets sprinkle British telephone boxes and black cabs for effect, then undo it by introducing a Cockney flower seller (with obligatory straw hat) and filling the streets with British sports cars and limousines (since they were the most common exports to the US; Since this same cheapo trick was used for so many years in long running TV series such as "Columbo" and "Murder She Wrote", it's clear that US producers realise that US audiences can be conned at low cost).
At heart the film is a strange, unworkable melange of comedy, romance and melodrama and fails to hit the mark on any of them. Screwball comedies blossomed and died in the 30's and 40's, this attempt to resurrect them does not succeed.
What undoes the film is the desperately phony "foggy London", the sets sprinkle British telephone boxes and black cabs for effect, then undo it by introducing a Cockney flower seller (with obligatory straw hat) and filling the streets with British sports cars and limousines (since they were the most common exports to the US; Since this same cheapo trick was used for so many years in long running TV series such as "Columbo" and "Murder She Wrote", it's clear that US producers realise that US audiences can be conned at low cost).
At heart the film is a strange, unworkable melange of comedy, romance and melodrama and fails to hit the mark on any of them. Screwball comedies blossomed and died in the 30's and 40's, this attempt to resurrect them does not succeed.