oscaralbert Review of The Grass Is Greener

The Grass Is Greener (1960)

You'd expect a movie to be able to upstage . . .

[6/10 · 7 June 2015]

. . . the stage play upon which it's based, but such apparently is not the case with THE GRASS IS GREENER. Except for a brief men-in-waders scene, this verbose exercise in talking sex to death might as well have been filmed on Broadway. Sure, there's a few touches of window dressing with have-and-have-not automobile comings and goings, as well as a walk-through of a couple high-ceilinged rooms. However, these scant minutes' worth of "real life" hardly provide an adequate antidote for what seems like hours of grueling repartee that may have sounded scintillating in a playwright's mind, but generally fall flat on stage, and pancake to paper thinness on a Big Screen. As a supposedly accommodating husband, Cary Grant looks particularly long-in-the-tooth, making his willingness to settle for his wife's sloppy seconds entirely reasonable (if not very convincing). However, Deborah Kerr's wayward wife "Hilary" character comes off as more gauche than a family's new mutt, who debuts by humping everyone's leg at an important dinner party. Any right-thinking household immediately would have such a nuisance pet "fixed," which is what most GRASS IS GREENER viewers will be hoping for Hilary.