Send Me No Flowers

After PILLOW TALK and LOVER COME BACK, I was expecting so much more than this film! The plot seems like a recycled TV sitcom episode and is overplayed throughout. The freshness of Rock Hudson and Doris Day together is pretty much gone as the plot just seems forced. About the only real positive is Tony Randall's cute performance. Rock is a hypochondriac who mistakenly thinks he's dying--he overhears the WRONG test results (just like Ralph Kramden, Fred Flintstone and many others). For a while he mopes around and overacts terribly, but finally decides he wants to find a new husband for his wife before he expires. That, a few cute moments and a big fight between DAY and HUDSON is about all you get in this film. Too bad.

Three stars out of ten. There's some funny material here, but some actions are just plain arbitrary. Towards the climax, Doris Day is leaving Rock Hudson and goes to the train station, but changes her mind and decides not to buy a ticket. After arguing with her husband, she gets upset and goes home to pack! Huh? Why wouldn't she have brought her luggage with her when she was getting ready to leave?? I really think the earlier scripts written by Stanley Shapiro were better stories. The opening scenes of advertisements for remedies playing while Rock Hudson turned in his sleep was funny enough. Every time Doris Day looks in the medicine cabinet or otherwise deals with his pills, there's a little sound effect that plays. I found it rather distracting, like something from an annoying children's movie. Tony Randall has the best jokes, especially while he's working on the eulogy.

I have this film at home, along with the other two in which all three (Randall, Hudson and Day) star in. I think this film is great, thanks to Randall's simple but really funny acting. All films these days are predictable, so its no different, but the difference is actually the fact that they just manage to be funny without obviously being so and are able to make a very funny film without using extreme measures and ridiculous comments that are used so often in our modern day films. I put this film first before 'Pillow Talk' (2nd)and 'Lover come back'(3rd). Otherwise, all of them are just really funny and refreshing!!! Where else would you find such nice, simple films?!

Send Me No Flowers (1964) I know a lot of us have affection for Doris Day and her regular woman spunky Mom next door approach. And Rock Hudson and his sidekick Tony Randall are first rate comic actors. Even director Norman Jewison is a solid force in 1960s and 70s Hollywood, if not one of their inventive geniuses (think "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Moonstruck"). So I understand that a lot of people have liked this movie for its lighthearted charm and the bright 1964 colors and sets. But at its it's a rotten movie. The script is one of the worst you can imagine--simplistic in its main idea, with clumsy or even mindless dialog, and a kind of television-at-its-worst tone. This is especially distressing because Julius Epstein wrote it--he's one of the Epstein twins who did the "Casablanca" screenplay. It might be actually a simple fact that Epstein was from a different generation than the movie's characters and he didn't have a feel for the Cold War let alone this flip side to the Cold War. Put all this another way? This ain't no "Pillow Talk." That 1959 movie, most of you know, is the classic Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy, and it plays well into both of their personas (and includes Randall, too). It has some really funny writing, a clever idea that lets Hudson work his acting chops a bit, and a more neurotic and annoying/lovable Day. Here you have to get into a kind of loping cornball, a series of interludes of comic anger and one-liner comebacks. It does have a fascinating aspect in the second half where Randall moves in with Hudson and there is a pre-saging (pre-staging?) of "The Odd Couple" (which Randall would later perform on television. They even are in bad together (unhappily), which you couldn't yet do in Hollywood due to the last vestiges of the Hays Code. (Hudson was gay, Randall was not, if this matters much.) Hudson rushes into the bright, sunny kitchen and says, "When a man's wife thinks he's having an affair, how can he convince her he's not?" Randall titters, "He can't." (This is right where there is an interesting early product placement: Rice Krispies and Maxwell House.) Randall (a lawyer) then suggests he confess he's having an affair as a way to break through the problem. Comic potential--and it gets a bit more silly than funny, but it does lead to the most interesting parts of the movie. Stick it out that far if you can. Maybe it's wrong to expect too much from any Doris Day movie (full disclosure: I find her more annoying than lovable). It's a time in both America and in the movies where part of society wore its glibness as a kind of badge. I mean, if you see "Glass Bottomed Boat" you'll see this maybe at it's clearest. Or here, where there is so little to really think or care about, except maybe enjoying the company of the three main characters, as far as that can go. It is kind of gussied up sit-com television half hour stretched into a full 100 minutes.

Last and definitely the worst of the Doris Day-Rock Hudson trilogy marks this 1964 film. The picture is done in by miserable writing and a story line that you can only take too far. It's basically the story of a hypochondriac who misunderstands his situation in the doctor's office and comes away with the idea that he is dying. Now, this is not exactly Rock Hudson's type of genre. Rock eventually tells wife Doris about all this and there is complete mayhem and more misunderstanding when Doris discovers this isn't so. She feels that Rock has told her this to cover up an alleged affair. Tony Randall again joins the Hudson-Day team, but this time he talks in a monotonous tone of voice, as the next door neighbor caught up in this nonsense.

It's probably films like this that made me wish I lived in the American suburbia of the 50's and 60's. The sun shone, the little lady was at home, and life was just a bowl of cherries. For me, this is narrowly the best of the Day/Hudson films. Rock Hudson plays George Kimball, a hypochondriac who thinks he has just a few weeks to live and decides to fix his wife (Day) up with a new man. That's basically the plot, but there are so many off-shoots and crossed wires that it keeps us amused all the way through. Hudson hams it up, Day is her usual fluffy self and the underrated Tony Randall does his marvellous 'best buddy' routine. But then along comes Paul Lynde and almost steals the entire show with his camp, gossipy funeral director. With his "Oh, I could tear my tongue out!" and his "Don't worry, I'll just nip out the back way" after his flying dive over Doris' suitcases in the hall (which surely must have been a genuine accident that was left in) he creases me up every time I watch this funny, funny film. Even the music is funny, just listen to the over-dramatic piano chords whenever Hudson turns up the pity. I had given this a 7, but writing this little review has made me appreciate the film even more - now it's an 8!

I am a great fan of "Pillow Talk" and "Lover Come Back", two earlier and riotously funny Doris/Rock collaborations, which shared storylines and plot conventions that were clearly more than coincidental. Perhaps if they had rehashed the same idea yet another time they would have had more success than they did with this mildly amusing yet ultimately disappointing movie. The script simply does not have the sparkling wit and elan of the other two. I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not not to keep it around on video. A highlight, as "Maltin" points out, is Paul Lynde's bit as the in-love-with-his-work cemetery owner.

Admittedly, I would have never seen a Rock Hudson picture if I hadn't seen a clip from this movie of Hudson in a wheelchair rolling out his backdoor, bouncing off a mattress and rolling back into Doris Day on "The Beverly Hillbillies." Determined to see the whole of this movie based on that one funny scene, I got myself a copy of this movie and loved it ! Hudson plays a hypochondriac who mistakenly believes he is dying. Trying to set up his wife played by Doris Day for after he is gone, he sets off one horrendous fight that looks like a comic version of "War of the Roses." Tony Randall has the Danny DeVito role in this comedy that also stars Paul Lynde in one of his best roles next to Uncle Arthur on "Bewitched" and Edward Andrews, a great actor of the Sixties whose first name is almost an anagram of his last. The movie is fast, furious and enjoyable, but mildly dated for it's times. While the times may have changed, the humor basicly has stayed the same.

This is a rather drab comedy from the 60s, the last teaming of Rock Hudson and Doris Day, and it lacks the spark of their earlier "Pillow Talk". The totally conventional plot consists of endless misunderstandings, and because we are ahead of the characters in each situation, we become almost impatient as we wait for them to understand what we already know. Doris Day has a rather colorless presence in this film, but Rock Hudson is very good as the hypochondriac. Some funny moments, but not enough. (**1/2)

Not very funny...and I can't image that it was back in its day, either. But Day, Hudson and Randall live in such a sunny, happy and easy parallel universe to our own that it's hard not to have a nice feeling about their movies even when they fail us as comedies. Day is a delight as always. Hudson is unfailingly handsome. Tony Randall and Paul Lynde show what really talented comedians they are, mining laughs from a generally mirth-barren script. It doesn't demand much from its viewers, but it's really sort of a bad movie. Worth watching when you're home on the sofa with a cold and some good woozy medicine to put you in the right mood.

Oh how i miss those days, where a picture didn't have to blow you out of the cinema, og to provoke your stymie with bloody violence. The Hollywood times, where you could get far with humor, love and a warm story.I grew up with the likes of Doris Day, Tony Randall, Rock HUdson, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brandon, Grace Kelly and many others fantastic actors. In this period of from 1945 - 1970 some of the best movies where made. We all remember films like Cacablanca, Some like it hot, The odd couple, The African Queen,From here to eternity, Roman holiday, The bridge over the river Kwai, Ben Hur, Spartacus, Doctor Zhivago. And take then the must fantastic musical that also where made before the time of the computer animation took over.Just think about Singing in the rain or my favorite, The sound of music and last The west side story. We domt make them any more. We don't know how to. People have chances and people have learn to demand more. Its just like drugs. The want more and bigger every time. I know that we later on has made bigger and more fantastic to watch for the eye and the ear movies. But where were those movies of our present, if we didn't have all the computer animation. What was Titanic, KIng Kong, Star Wars, The lord of the ring and many others of the big films of today. And how good are the actors of to day, when you take all the fancy computer tecnic away from them. Its just like inside the music world. Just you have a good face and a attitude, we give you the voice. Back in the old days, they had to be good acting, because there wasn't anything to save them. The makeup at the time, was awful, and the special affects wasen't effective. They had to rely on the actors, Screenplayers and the director. And think about how we admire the old gone stars. Look at Marylin, James Dean, Marlon Brandon, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Katharina Hepburn,John Wayne and Steve Mcqueen,and menu others. When we go into a poster shop, there are all there on the wall. They have become legends of a time where it all seemed easier and not so complex-ed as it is today. But back to send me no flower. I get filled up with joy, when i see movies like this. The plot is funny and the actors understand how to make it even better. Doris day is as she always were, charming, sweet and sexy as hell. All the female actors of today, who are me-lasting there buddy to find the perfect sexy look, should learn from Doris. Not a single time, showed she her naked body or even one breast in the *, but we men still dream about her. Maybe because she still left somethings to imagine. She never sold out. Rock Hudson the perfect man, plays as always with grace and man power. He has the perfect face and it was god who gave him the perfect match on the screen in Doris Day. But they where only that good, because they had the perfect third wheel in Tony Randall. I have never seen a man play so perfectly a drunk, as he dos in this movie. Those 3 together is still the best date for me on a rainy day. I hope you all will go back to the old days to pick of some of those old movies and give them a chance. They might give you the time of your life, and then you might better understand why your parents or there parents always talk about that time in film history. All the best to you From Denmark.