Rarely seen (though that's soon to change we're told thanks to a BFI DVD release in June) Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? is a fun, breezy comedy which sees some cracking performances delivered with a palpable energy.
Admittedly seen 50 plus years on what was no doubt a very funny entertainment for its week (this was my parents childhood time when, as they delight in telling me, only one or two people on the street had a TV and they went to the cinema every week) but today it does seem slight. There's little to the story with any sense of reality going out the window early on. Not that you don't expect a farce to be ridiculous, that's the point, but when done really well they can tread the fine line between the credible and the ridiculous. I think this one goes past it by the end. It says something that probably 10-20 minutes before the end i was starting to think "this is going on a bit" - when it's only an 80 minute film.
Okay, so it's no classic but there's lots to enjoy here. Although David Tomlinson (probably best known to modern audiences as the father in Mary Poppins and for other Disney roles in films like Bedknobs & Broomsticks and The Love Bug) and Diana Dors get top billing the film belongs to the frantic antics (and shameless mugging) of Bonar Colleano. He's a hoot as the American serviceman who finds he may inadvertently be a bigamist and has to juggle both wives in adjacent rooms of a hotel suite. I didn't know Colleano before this movie but as he died in a car accident at the early age of 34 he was perhaps cut off too early to have made the lasting impression on film that his performance here makes me think he could have.
Diana Dors is dynamite on screen and the comparisons to Marilyn stand up. The camera loves her and she knows how to use it, but while many would be distracted by the image if you pay attention you can really see a talented performer beyond it. I know a lot of people that peg Marilyn as just a pretty face (and dynamite body of course) but you watch her in films like Seven Year Itch, Don't Bother To Knock (a fascinating performance) etc and you see a genuinely talented performer. I haven't seen enough Dors to qualify it but the way she uses her persona and profile here suggest more than just the image she's remembered for.
Tomlinson plays the befuddled, bumbling British gentleman with aplomb as usual - though you never really believe the relationship angle to his storyline. Sid James takes some getting used to as an American serviceman for those of us used to his Carrying On but he is great and very funny, especially in his scenes with the delightful Audrey Freeman.
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? may not stand up as a classic but it doesn't need to. It does stand up as a fun, playful little story with a good cast giving it their all. Well worth a watch.
