Dated, but Fun

Rating: Null/10 (9 April 2004)

I am nearly 38 years old and until yesterday I had never seen this movie.
I watched it yesterday and found it strangely compelling. The movie is very dated, just like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" the morality conflicts of 60's suburbia just don't resonate 40 years later.
Despite this, I found the movie very entertaining. The movie is clearly 'front loaded' delivering both its best drama and its best comedy in the first half of the movie.
The second half is a little lost. Ben's obsession with Elaine is hard to extract laughs from - and the film has to lumber to its ending.
The actual ending itself however is perfect. The scene on the bus, is perfect, because as the camera pulls back both actors give us strong signals that they are just as lost, just as unsure as they ever were. We see that already both of them have begun to question their bold act. They know WHY they did it, now they are very unsure what to do next.
I thought that was the perfect ending.
The music, the props (check out the bizarre bathing cap on Ben's Mom, or the ridiculous alcohol containers at the bar), even the morale strife is very dated, but perhaps that's now an additional asset to this film's charm.
This film isn't genius, but it is clever, well made and well acted. I enjoyed it very much.