The 1954 Technicolor comedy "Susan Slept Here" is a major disappointment coming from the last years of RKO Radio. This remake is a major disappointment coming from 20th Century Fox during the time it was making "Cleopatra", the elephantine epic that nearly bankrupt that studio. This isn't a page by page remake of the Debbie Reynolds/Dick Powell film that did neither of them any good, but the similarities are obvious considering that they had the same director, Frank Tashlin.
The problem here is that the characters starting with Tuesday Weld as the screeching teenager and continuing down to her self centered mother Celeste Holm are not very likeable, and are only written with minimal dimensions. Terry-Thomas ("I say, good show!") as Holm's boyfriend, is subleasing her beach house while she's in Europe, and surprises when Weld turns up, hiding in a dinosaur bone crate. Richard Beymer is living in a trailer in the driveway with his dauchsund, and ends up being Weld's protector as she gets into all sorts of trouble. The dauchsund's obsession with the dinosaur bone is the highlight of the film, the one genuine laugh.
It's easy to be manipulated by the glossy Cinemascope and Technicolor, especially with the lavish sets and costumes. But to imagine Terry-Thomas as the subject of all sorts of affections from various women is laughable, and even the handsome Beymer is charisma free as the young hero. Why stories like this of troubled young women getting themselves infatuated with older men kept being done in Hollywood is a bigger mystery than any Sherlock Holmes mystery. Weld's self centered and demanding character is completely unappealing. I'll take a dozen Hayley Mills plotting parent traps over her any day.
1 out of 2 found this helpful