aGiven the slapstick theme of the trailer, and the upbeat, silly title song, I went into Please Don't Eat the Daisies thinking it would be a silly, ridiculous, 1960s comedy. I've seen almost every movie Doris Day ever made, and David Niven is my all-time favorite celebrity boyfriend, so I was prepared to endure two hours of absurdity for their sake. It's a running joke in my house that I ask, "Why wasn't it David Niven?" during movies in which he could have easily played the lead, like My Fair Lady or The Bridge on the River Kwai. While watching Please Don't Eat the Daisies, I was shocked. Not only was Doris Day miscast, but so was David Niven!
David Niven plays a world-class jerk-for lack of a better word. I lost track of how many times I shouted at the screen, "What an-!" And if I was insulting my beloved David Niven, there was something terribly wrong. He plays a theater critic who is desperate to join elite society and "belong" to the theater crowd. Before long, he starts writing nasty reviews with biting comments, just so others will laugh at his jokes during cocktail parties and quote him. Oh, and by the way, he's married and has four young sons. He constantly puts himself before his wife and children, he picks fights with his wife, and he continually spends time with Janis Paige, an actress who hits on him at every opportunity.
Niven's wife is supposed to be a schlumpy, dumpy, frumpy woman who struggles to fit into her clothes. There are several jokes about her weight, and her mother Spring Byington berates her more than once for her appearance, telling her it's no wonder her husband is tempted by another woman because she's let herself go. Taking the abusive, offensive nature of that relationship out of the equation, it doesn't make any sense. Doris Day plays the wife! She looks like a Barbie doll, and they did nothing to ugly her up and make her unappealing. Janis Paige is "a pig", in the immortal words of Dean Martin in Some Came Running. No one would ever look twice at her if he was married to Doris Day.
At the heart of the story is a bad marriage. Doris and Niven don't see eye to eye anymore about the important things in life. They fight, and she ends up apologizing and catering and filling every woman in the audience with a defeated depression. Even I, The Niv's biggest fan, hated him in this movie. Neither lead gave a bad performance-Doris cried on cue and Niven was frazzled and curt-but they just shouldn't have been cast. It just didn't work. If the movie had been made ten years earlier, and if Spencer Tracy and Shelly Winters were the leads, it would have worked. Shelly can be dumpy and apologetic, and Spence can be a jerk just by breathing.
For the sake of brevity, I'll cut this review short. I recommend you stay very far away from this depressing, upsetting movie. It will make you hate David Niven, and nobody wants that.
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