Let's Make Love

Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Milton Berle (cameo), Bing Crosby (cameo), Gene Kelly (cameo)
Directed by: George Cukor
Rating: Not Rated
Genre: Comedy, Musical, Romance
1960

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A billionaire (Yves Montand) falls in love with a beautiful singer (Marilyn Monroe) and joins her theater group, where he proceeds to act as an impersonator of himself as he tries to woo her.

Review:

Tim: This is a troubled, silly movie that offers very little in ways of entertainment or excitement, but has plenty of slow scenes and boredom to go around. I barely know where to start with this film's problems. First off, is the laughable performance of Yves Montand, who only got the part because nearly every other leading man in Hollywood turned down the role (this is pretty humorous- the list includes Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, James Stewart and Yul Brynner). So Montand steps in and proceeds to wreck havoc by giving a lackluster performance, having absolutely no chemistry, and is not the least bit appealing to the audience. He was not very good in this movie.

That might have been fine, because the real draw of this film was Marilyn Monroe. She is who audiences came to see. The problem is that Monroe's screen time pales in comparison to the nearly constant presence of Montand. Even if this flaw had been fixed, Monroe really seemed to mail in this performance. In this, her second-to-last film, she seems disinterested, out of synch, and not terribly involved. Yes, she does have a few moments that almost capture some of her past glory, but as a whole, she gives a remarkably disappointing performance. She has no chemistry with Montand, and besides a few strong musical numbers, bores us.

This film also suffers because it is a strange breed of movie. It is a comedy, with a small amount of drama and a great deal of disappointing romance, along with a number of musical numbers. Some of these songs work fairly well- "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" and "Specialization" are both halfway decent. The rest of the songs are somewhat less interesting. The movie is also two hours long, which is about 20-25 minutes longer than necessary. This makes the movie a bit of a chore to get through, particularly because we don't really care about much of anything going on in the movie.

I am being very hard on this film, but I want to admit that there are a few good moments. I enjoyed the scenes of Montand trying to convince Monroe of his true identity. As I mentioned, a few of the musical numbers allow Monroe to show a bit of her charm. I also really enjoyed the opening story of the Clement family. It felt very disjointed from the rest of the movie, but it was interesting to watch.

Sadly, the good moments don't even get close to outweighing the bad ones. This is a disappointing, silly movie that I had to suffer through simply to finish. This production had a lot of problems, and you can see the evidence of those in the end product.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Niagara, Some Like it Hot, The Seven Year Itch