Qu'est-ce qui fait courir les filles?

Mostly dreary vacation movie filmed on Hollywood back lots standing in for various South American locales, with lots of travel footage sandwiched in between the studio stuff. Why the studio didn't have the cast go on location is beyond me. The year was 1959 and the film is in color, and it is all too apparent when the actors are performing on sound stages. Clifton Webb and Jane Wyman take daughters Carol Lynley and Jill St. John on vacation only to have the girls fall in love with total strangers (Gary Crosby as a military man for Lynley and a Latin actor playing a playboy for St. John). Webb is funny as always while Wyman is strictly window dressing. Paul Henreid does a nice turn as the playboy's dad. Badly dated.

This one won't be for everyone but I enjoyed the gentle, quiet side of it as well as its comedy. There are parts that move slowly and parts that may not make sense to some in a modern audience. I watched them as a slice of life, and for the most part I liked them.

A psychologist and his wife's oldest daughter Meg goes on a school trip to South America.

"She is going there to study the continent of the future, not to become a beachcomber."-Robert Dean

"South America is so far away and she is such a nice girl"-Mary Dean

Meg leaves the tour after enjoying Sao Paolo, Brasil. She sends a telegram to her folks that she will be staying an additional six weeks studying under the famous Eduardo Burroso.

"Well if she gets to stay down there on her own, I don't think it's fair I have to be in do early Saturday night."-Betsy

"Bessy would you please go downstairs and warm up the milk before you reassure your father into a nervous breakdown."-Mary Dean

There is so much comedy in this sweet film. When the family finds out that Meg is staying in Brasil, the father books tickets for the rest of the family to join her. When they arrive they are met by Meg and Senor Burroso...and given the news that Meg had been honored with an art scholarship for a year in Brasil, a very personal Burroso scholarship.

Meg is staying in The Women's Residence Club, but Burroso sets her family up in one of his new high rise apartments. Her dad is a little concerned as Eduardo is his age.

An unexpected plane stop on their sightseeing tour ends up in the most hilarious encounter with an American Air Force soldier from Georgia.

Jane Wyman is gorgeous in this film and plays a wonderful mom. The actor playing the concerned father is smart and hits just the right notes. And the sights of South America! This is a gorgeous postcard to all of the sights in Brasil, including Rio during carnival. Then there is an excursion to Lima, Peru for the bull fights...musical performances and flamenco!

"As soon as we get back to the hotel I'm going to write Ernest Hemingway quite a letter, quite a letter!"-Robert Dean.

"Are you implying that I am being overprotective about them? Emotional? Surely you know me better than that?"-Robert Dean.

"You can't go around spanking everyone just because they don't want to get married."-Betsy.

This was fun and funny...during quarantine it was also a lovely trip to South America!

While I love Clifton Webb, he's one of my favorite actors. However, this movie was just okay. The remake, "Take Her, She's Mine" with James Stewart and Sandra Dee was considerably more entertaining.

In "Take Her, She's Mine" James Stewart's character keeps getting mistaken for the "actor" James Stewart. This is also one of the first movies that Sandra Dee transformed from the "cute, sweet little Gidget" type girl to "showing" that she was a fully grown woman.

There are also appearances by very young Bob Denver (Gilligan from Gilligan's Island), Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle from the Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.), and James Brolin (Marcus Welby, M.D., The Amityville Horror - 1979 version, and Westworld.)

This is a fun little film featuring Clifton Webb and Jane Wyman as parents who chase their 2 daughters through South America as the young women find love. Webb is wonderful as always and his drunk scene is a classic. Wyman isn't given much to do but calm her exasperated spouse but Carol Lynley is impressive as the younger daughter (although her choice of chubby Gary Crosby as lover is a bit hard to understand). Jill St John is awfully wet as the older daughter - you could never believe she was an accomplished sculptor. But as her lover Nico Minardos is very funny and very sexy - as a "Brazilian beatnik". Paul Henreid is suave as his father.

There are some funny scenes - the strip search is good - and dialogue and there is great music, including a fabulous flamenco dance sequence with Jose Greco. But why oh why didn't they take the actors on location? The production is a high budget cinemascope movie so why not spend that little bit more? Instead we get lots of second unit travelogue type footage of Sao Paulo, Rio, Lima and Trinidad and the actors standing in front of obvious rear projections. This almost ruins the film.