I remember liking this when it first came out - I just saw it again and don't know why.
Segal's character is a sort of professional philanderer ("I've never made love to a woman in the same city as my wife"). Jackson's character is superior and rather humorless. The two do not produce magic together. I find myself strongly resenting the repeated insults by Jackson, her arrogance, her haughty scorn.
The movie is also very much of its time. Like Pardon Mon Affaire, Cousin, Cousine, Pardon Mon Affaire Two, I Do I Do, I Love My Wife, its point is to share the great fun of seeing a man has in his attempts to deceive his unsuspecting wife and children (of course in Cousin, Cousine, they loudly make love when the children and spouses are present).
In a period in which we see movies such as A Walk on the Moon, Unfaithful, A Perfect Murder - in all of which infidelity is taken deadly seriously - its consequences wrecking lives, the day in which this kind of fluff was entertaining is long over.
This is not a good movie - I actually like George Segal as an actor (and the Viennese reviewer should know that Americans have seen George Segal each week for years in a very popular television series). Both he and Glenda Jackson do their best - but their lines aren't very funny, the situation is terribly contrived (yes, coincidental meetings abound), and one has great difficulty sympathizing with either the mother who abandons her daughters or the husband who must work so hard to deceive his whole family.
Segal's character is a sort of professional philanderer ("I've never made love to a woman in the same city as my wife"). Jackson's character is superior and rather humorless. The two do not produce magic together. I find myself strongly resenting the repeated insults by Jackson, her arrogance, her haughty scorn.
The movie is also very much of its time. Like Pardon Mon Affaire, Cousin, Cousine, Pardon Mon Affaire Two, I Do I Do, I Love My Wife, its point is to share the great fun of seeing a man has in his attempts to deceive his unsuspecting wife and children (of course in Cousin, Cousine, they loudly make love when the children and spouses are present).
In a period in which we see movies such as A Walk on the Moon, Unfaithful, A Perfect Murder - in all of which infidelity is taken deadly seriously - its consequences wrecking lives, the day in which this kind of fluff was entertaining is long over.
This is not a good movie - I actually like George Segal as an actor (and the Viennese reviewer should know that Americans have seen George Segal each week for years in a very popular television series). Both he and Glenda Jackson do their best - but their lines aren't very funny, the situation is terribly contrived (yes, coincidental meetings abound), and one has great difficulty sympathizing with either the mother who abandons her daughters or the husband who must work so hard to deceive his whole family.