User reviews

It appears that many reviewers on IMDb want to consider Father Goose as a minor feature, lacking the sophistication of better comedies. I think it is worthy of a listing toward the top flight of comedic endeavor. What makes a "good comedy" after all? Can you comment on a more important event than WW 2 and attitudes towards it? Can you have a more able actor and supporting cast? Was the initial attack on the South Seas and attempts to defend more important than later efforts? Is the true story of humanity with all weaknessness, better expressed in any other WW2 movie? I think Father Goose is a first class movie in Script and performance. Why say it is less because it doesn't appear to address PC issues? I love this movie.

This film is lots of fun and goes down smooth. Grant is classic as the grizzled boozer who plays look-out for the Allies and a gaggle of young lassies. It is one of the more well-executed romantic comedies (that's how I would classify it, anyway) and the tension of the final scenes is excellent considering the difficulty of weaving in such weighty material to an otherwise farcical film. Nobody does those twisted-lip facial expressions of exasperation better than Grant.

I will always remember a certain Sunday in lil ole Luverne, Alabama, having a great time with my family watching trusty TBS (the way it used to be). It's not the greatest movie ever, but it is a fine choice for a lazy afternoon or light evening fun. I give it a 7/10 and it might deserve higher marks. Break out the Orville Reddenbocker, and follow with an "Operation Petticoat" chaser.

This second to last film of Cary Grant was one he spoke highly of in interviews.

It was my decided pleasure to be in attendance at his "A Conversation With Cary Grant" at the Front Row Theater in Cleveland shortly before his death. During this unforgettable evening, Grant fielded questions from an audience of over five hundred for nearly two hours.

Grant seemed to possess a photographic memory, recalling incidents of his life and career down to the smallest detail. "Father Goose" was revealed to be one of his favorite projects.

Looking at the film today, one can see the senior star enjoying his character and well polished script. He was nicely paired with Leslie Caron, and the two struck an engaging chemistry for these capers.

Grant also had the good sense to say farewell to these leading man parts (being aware that he could never become a "character" actor) threw in the towel and moved on to better things, like Fabrege.

We're left with another delightful Grant performance in an illustrious and remarkably diversified career.

I have a certain fondness for this 1964 movie because it is one of the earliest I remember seeing in the back of my parents' 1963 Rambler station wagon at the now-defunct Burlingame Drive-In near San Francisco. The film's catchy theme song, "Pass Me By", was in my head for years. In the intervening years, I have come to recognize Cary Grant's immaculate precision as a comic actor, and even playing a grizzled, alcoholic beachcomber like Walter Eckland, he still exudes the sharp wit and crack timing that is his hallmark. In fact, Grant is at the top of his game here.

Sharply written by Peter Stone and Frank Tarloff, the story revolves around Eckland's futile attempts to remain reclusive aboard his boat tooling around the South Pacific. Unfortunately, WWII is raging on, and the British Navy need to use him as a hidden spotter of Japanese fighter planes. He is tricked into the role and remains shipwrecked manning his post on an isolated island. Enter Catherine Freneau, a priggish French schoolteacher, who has been stranded on another island with seven schoolgirls. Eckland fetches them, and they all cohabitate with inevitable shenanigans occurring.

Director Ralph Nelson, who generally made relatively lightweight fare, keeps the story fairly facile until they come under attack and a suspenseful element is carried through to the end. In what turned out to be his last leading role, romantic or otherwise, Grant was applauded at the time for dispensing with his suave manner to inhabit this character, but actually it's a throwback to the everyman characters he played in "Only Angels Have Wings" and "Gunga Din". The difference is that at age sixty, he displays his talents as both romantic comedy lead and action hero with such seasoned adroitness.

As Catherine, Leslie Caron demonstrates just how greatly underrated she is as a comedy actress. Even though her character threatens to be strenuously rigid, she conveys Catherine's vulnerability with subtle nuance and also has a very funny drunk scene where she gets to show off her ballet dancer gams. Grant and Caron have great chemistry. Trevor Howard dryly plays Eckland's friendly adversary, Commander Houghton, who transmits instructions by ham radio, and the girls are all gratefully portrayed with individual personalities. I have always been impressed how this film maintains its light heart and humor even though it's clear that the wartime setting is a critical element of the plot. It remains good, solid entertainment.

I agree with almost all of the other reviews but add that Trevor Howard is wonderful. He is completely natural and believable to the point that he almost steals the show from Cary Grant; not an easy task! Cary and Leslie Caron make their unlikely match seem quite natural. -- And the photography is just gorgeous. This was especially so when I first viewed it on a big screen back when it was released.

"Father Goose" is not my pick for the best Cary Grant flick (I think that's "Operation Petticoat", if you exclude his collaborations with Hitchcock), but it's a pleasant--if a little overlong--movie that works very well as light entertainment. The dialogue is superb, containing some really witty remarks and delightful exchanges. And it is fun to see Grant playing a sullen boozer--quite an exceptional role for him.

Have seen this movie many times.. Cary Grant at his best! In real life, Cary is in his 60's and Caron is in her 30's. But the age difference doesn't even come into play here. They seem to fit perfectly. See it, you won't be sorry!

There just isn't much that can be better on a dreary day than to sit down and enjoy Cary Grant. Add to that Leslie Caron, and you have a formula for a comedy that will entertain the most curmudgeonly person.

This war comedy won one Oscar and was nominated for two more. It was, without a doubt, the best comedy of the year. Grant and Caron had a magic together that could have fueled many more movies. I am so glad that he hung around to do this, his penultimate film in a career that spanned 30 years.

With a supporting cast of seven or eight female schoolgirls, the laughs were continual. A great film for the time, and one that is worth watching over and over.

No this is not one of the greatest comedies of all time, but it is one of Grant's best comedic performances. He is at the very top of his game. Every movement, every gesture is well nigh perfect. It looks effortless on his part but it is all well thought out. Grant doesn't so much steal his scenes as make all the other actors seem funnier. The usually pleasant Leslie Caron rises to nearly Audrey Hepburn status in his presence.

Film historian David Thomson called Cary Grant the finest actor in Hollywood history and Time critic Richard Schickel once called him "a technician of genius". Watch Grant closely in this film and see why.

This is a great little comedy deserving of all the praise it has here from other posters.

Cary Grant shakes off his usual polished self as the grizzled hard-drinking loner, Walter Ekland, staying out of the war and harms way. Enter Leslie Caron and her charges, and Ekland finds the war isn't so easy to stay out of if you have something to lose.

The script is pleasant and well-observed and the humour is gentle. It's probably a little too long at almost two hours but the characters are so well-etched and performed that the humour is sustained to the end.

Well worth seeing.

"Father Goose" is a romantic comedy set, rather incongruously, against the backdrop of the New Guinea campaign during World War II. (Filming actually took place in Jamaica). Walter Eckland is an American beach-bum living in a shack on the beach who becomes a coast watcher reporting to the Allied forces on the movements of Japanese aircraft. (The film's title derives from his code-name "Mother Goose"; all coast watchers in the area have code-names derived from nursery rhymes or fairy tales). He is not motivated by patriotism (an emotion quite foreign to his character) but is blackmailed into accepting the role by Frank Houghton, an Australian naval officer, who confiscates the alcoholic Eckland's supply of whisky. The is hidden around the area, and Eckland is rewarded for each confirmed aircraft sighting with directions enabling him to find one of the bottles.

The other party to the romance is Catherine Freneau, a French schoolteacher who meets Eckland while she is fleeing from the advancing Japanese with seven of her female pupils. The two take an immediate dislike to one another, largely because of their very different personalities and lifestyles. Eckland is (in Catherine's words) a "rude, foul-mouthed, drunken, filthy beast", while she is prim, puritanical and (in Eckland's words) a "Miss Goody Two Shoes". Catherine's opinion of Eckland is not improved when she learns that he was once a lecturer in history at an American university, but resigned his position in favour of life as a beach-bum in protest against the college authorities who insisted that he should wear a necktie while giving his lectures.

It is, of course, an established convention in Hollywood rom-coms that true love is based upon hatred at first sight, but at least in most films which make use of this convention the transition from mutual dislike to ardent passion is a gradual one. In this film it is virtually instantaneous. One minute Eckland and Catherine are slapping one another around the face, the next they are discussing their wedding plans, with no psychologically convincing explanation for the abrupt change. It doesn't help that there is little chemistry between the sexagenarian Cary Grant and the beautiful Leslie Caron, in her early thirties at the time. In Grant's previous film "Charade" he had succeeded much better in making an older man-younger woman relationship, in that case with Audrey Hepburn, believable, but there he had had the assistance of a witty, literate script, something which "Father Goose" largely lacks. Another weakness is that, although the story is supposed to be taking place in an active war zone, we get very little sense of the characters being in any sort of danger, except at the very end when Eckland, Catherine and the girls are threatened by a Japanese gunboat while being rescued by an American submarine.

This was Grant's penultimate film- his last was to be "Walk, Don't Run" from two years later- and apparently one of his favourites, although the critics have not always agreed with him. I wouldn't agree either. The best part of the film, in fact, is the early scenes between Eckland and Trevor Howard's Houghton, which are quite amusing. The film, however, starts to go downhill when the main romantic plot starts and it ends up as a sentimental and not very original bog-standard rom-com. 5/10

Some goofs. Houghton and his fellow-officers are supposed to be Australian, but all speak with British accents. Although Catherine is French, she pronounces her Christian name in the English manner. (The French pronunciation would be closer to "Katrine"). Her father was a diplomat, and she mentions that one of his postings was to "Fiume in Yugoslavia". In 1942 when the story is set Fiume was still in Italy; it only became part of Yugoslavia (under the Croatian name Rijeka) after the war.

I've recently learnt about Cary Grant and purchased a few of his movies. I like Father Goose the best. Cary Grant and Leslie Caron were very intelligent in this movie: the way they brought out character they played - Mr. Eckland and Madame Freneau.

I feel connected with the story. My daughter and I have watched this movie more than 100 times and we really enjoy it every time. In Father Goose, Cary Grant played a character, which was quite different from other of his movies such as Indiscreet, That Touch Of Mink, To Catch A Thief, etc.., He was unshaved, uncombed, filthy, untidy, insensitive, and care-free. But underneath of this messy image, a suave, full of fact-of-life Walter Eckland would not mind to suck out the venom in an attempt to save Ms. Freneau. I was really moved.

All poor Cary Grant wanted to do was sit out World War II in peace, but the British Navy and the Japanese in the Pacific had some other ideas. Drafted by his friend, Royal Navy Commander Trevor Howard into being a coast watcher on some Pacific tropic isle, Grant's problems multiply exponentially when he finds himself on the same island as Leslie Caron and several school girls, playing Father Goose.

Ms. Caron is a schoolteacher with several young ladies in her charge and they've been stranded. Hard enough being a solitary coast watcher in the South Pacific in 1942, now he has to take care of several females as well.

It's good to remember that this is not the dapper Cary Grant we're all used to seeing. Grant reversed type and did it quite successfully playing a combination of Humphrey Bogart's Charlie Allnut from The African Queen and Charles Laughton's Ginger Ted from The Beachcomber. With a little bit of John Wayne's Rooster Cogburn thrown in.

Actually I think Grant most reminds of Laughton as Ginger Ted. Charlie Allnut went into World War I far more willingly than Grant did, and Rooster Cogburn if nothing else was about doing his duty albeit in his own fashion. But Grant's Walter Eckland is definitely Ginger Ted if Laughton had gotten himself dragooned into being a coast-watcher.

Father Goose is a nice change of pace for Cary Grant and there's a bit of Elsa Lanchester and Katharine Hepburn in Leslie Caron's portrayal as the spinster schoolteacher. Though Grant likes his liquor as much as Wayne, Bogart, and Laughton did, in this film we've got a reverse situation. He has to give Caron some medicinal alcohol when he thinks she's snake bitten. It's the best scene in the film.

Father Goose is not in the first rank of Cary Grant films, but it's pleasant enough entertainment. It turned out to be his next to last film and he was lucky enough to go out as people remembered him.

If you are looking for comparisons and don't mind a bit of a stretch, then you can consider "Father Goose" (1964) as another version of "Bringing Up Baby". In both Cary Grant gets to play a character experiencing a host of aggravations. Leslie Caron's Catherine Frenau is not as zany as Hepburn's Susan, but still manages to irritate Grant for most of the film until he finally realizes that he is in love with her. And instead of a leopard and a dog running amuck in rural Connecticut, "Father Goose" features seven schoolgirls of various nationalities running amuck on a Pacific island during WWII.

Everything works pretty well in this film although Grant is not quite up to an American accent so there are several awkward moments with the script. And the age difference makes the Grant-Caron romance unconvincing. Fortunately the producers skate over the romantic elements. In fact, the romance is treated so superficially that you wonder why they bothered to insert it into the story. A similar romance got much the same treatment that year in "My Fair Lady".

The film's real strength is the interaction between Grant and the seven schoolgirls as it manages a fair amount of believable characterization for each of them. The initially silent Jenny (Sharyl Locke), tomboy Harry (Jennifer Berrington), chronic complainer Anne (Pip Sparke), Elizabeth (Stephanie Berrington) and her imaginary friend Gretchen, coming of age Christine (Venina Greenlaw), and the French twins (Laurelle and Nichole Felsette). All have distinct personalities and it is obvious that Grant had a lot of fun working with each of them; so much so that he stayed in touch with them even after they grew up, married, and started their own families.

Grant's Walter Eckland is an American drifter hoping the war will just pass him by; illustrated during the opening credits by Digby Wolfe singing "Pass Me By" as Eckland (with an unwanted hitchhiking Pelican) steers his boat into the harbor. The war catches up with him there when the Harbor Master (Trevor Howard) tricks him into taking a coast-watching job until a replacement can be found.

His job is reporting by radio any movements by Japanese planes and ships near his island station. The reluctant recruit is rewarded with a bottle of whiskey (previously hidden somewhere on the island by the Royal Navy) each time one of his reports is confirmed.

Walter seems to thrive on this assignment until he has to share his island with a French teacher Catherine Frenau (Leslie Caron) and seven young charges. Miss Frenau hides the remaining whiskey bottles and the females take over Walter's hut.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

In a way, Cary Grant is almost over the top in his portrayal for this film. It fits his typical role & Trevor Howard does very well in support. The chemistry between Grant & Leslie Carron makes this one worth watching.

The plot & type of humor is aging & wink & hint kind of stuff but is brought off well enough that it is better than the average movie fair being produced in this era. If you want a pleasant diversion, this is a good place to start.

The child actresses in this film are good but restrained in this film. You will find that they are well placed within the film but not real memorable.

I wouldn't dare say this was an extremely great movie, but it was pretty good, I enjoyed it. I think this is the first Cary Grant movie I've ever seen and I thought he did a fine job with his role. Some of his reactions are just hilarious!

There are quite a few times though where you really feel for Cary Grant's character, because he gets completely over-run by the women that he is forced to provide for. In the end though, everyone seems to get along.

All I can really say about the film is that it's a pretty interesting story with some interesting turn of events and some good comedy. I wouldn't recommend the film to everyone, but if you're interested, go ahead and take a peak. I hope you enjoy the film.

-Chris

Father Goose was Cary Grant's penultimate movie and his last of any real quality. It's a real fun affair and great to see Grant enjoy himself playing against type as the carefree, scruffy beachcomber, co-opted by an old naval friend into serving as an allied coast watcher, in the early days on from the Japanese invasion of Singapore. Not long into his stint, he finds himself as a conscripted guardian to seven young female school students and their teacher, who have also escaped the Japanese invasion from the north.

Grant and Leslie Caron playing French school teacher Catherine Freneau have a wonderful chemistry happening in what turns out to be a very entertaining rom-com of opposites attracting one another, who eventually find out, they are not really that different, especially when it comes down to things that really count. Director Ralph Nelson helms with an appropriate light touch and tosses a moderately suspenseful climax into this largely comic tale, just to remind us again of its wartime origins.

Some of the set pieces to stand-out are Walter's to and fro radio conversations with naval friend Frank, played by a very relaxed Trevor Howard, Walter teaching Catherine to "hand - fish", the snake-bite episode and the radio-conducted wedding. Upon viewing episodes such as these, one can appreciate why the screenplay by Peter Stone (following encouragement from Grant) won an Oscar.

The Jamaican locations stand in admirably for the Coral Sea islands upon which the story is set and the opening credits allow us to hear the original version of the popular Oscar - winning theme song, Pass Me By, covered thereafter by a succession of different artists. Father Goose is a fun, light adventure about which, only the most curmudgeonly of viewers would fail to find plenty to enjoy.

I'm a great fan of Cary Grant. He's one of my favorite actors and I was fortunate to meet him in October 1986 in Dallas, Texas, at the Princess Grace Foundation Gala. He was as charming in person as he is on the silver screen.

I love Cary Grant's movies and "Father Goose" is by far one of his funniest and most underrated.

The first time I saw this movie was December 1965 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, NY, with my parents, brother and sister.

We waited 3 1/2 hours in line to get into the theater and my Dad kept running to get hot chocolate for all of us to help keep warm. But the wait was well worth it!

We saw a beautiful rendition of the Nativity Show on the stage with real animals - sheep, camels, etc. Then the Rockettes came out and did their Wooden Soldiers routine and a group of singers sang the song "More'. The stage show was awesome!

Then "Father Goose" was shown and I remember everyone just laughing and laughing through the whole movie! Especially my Dad - he laughed the most! It is one of my fondest Christmas memories.

I just watched this movie again last night and still laughed out loud! It's timeless - Cary Grant, Leslie Caron, the children and the whole cast are excellent!

If you want to see a good, fun family film, this is the one to see!

This is one of my favorite movies. I remember watching it as a child in the 1960's and it still delights me every time it happens to come on t.v. Cary Grant, who was known for playing suave, debonair characters in most of his movies, plays against type as a scruffy, hard drinker who was a professor before he decided to drop out of society and make a living as a boat captain. Leslie Caron is perfectly cast as the uptight Catherine, headmistress to several young ladies of different nationalities who are dropped on a deserted island during World War II as the Japanese prepare to invade. Hilarity ensues as Walter (Cary Grant's character) and the girls and headmistress all meet up and try to live together on the island until they are rescued. This movie has some very funny moments, and Grant was just great in his role. This is a very good family movie, no rough language, no nudity, just clean, old fashioned family fun.

Cary Grant - even unshaven- simply doesn't fit the part of an isolated drunken misanthrope. Even suspending disbelief on that point, there is - weirdly - no chemistry between him and the (too young!) "counter culture young woman." Audrry Hepburn could make it happen in Charade, but Miss Caron misses the mark.

The bratty children may have passed for "endearing" in the 1960s, but in 2022 they serve as mascots for the Remain Childless" program. Horrid!