DeanNYC To be completely fair, we can't really judge this film by our 21st Century standards. This is a story of how a Married Man can cheat on his wife and get away with it. So, right there, the very premise of this movie is out of date.Gene Kelly, who was dancing less and less on screen by the mid 1960s, had the opportunity to step behind the camera a handful of times and helm some films. This is arguably his worst effort.And yet, the picture isn't without its charms. Walter Matthau is endlessly watchable even when he has very little to work with, and he's doing the most he can to make this worthwhile. It's a difficult circumstance because we're meant to believe that his character is married to Inger Stevens, and yet wants to stray just to get some strange. I guess if you'll buy that, you'll swallow the premise whole.Also you have Robert Morse, straight from his effort in the Broadway smash turned Hollywood musical, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," who continues to instruct in the ways of attaining his goal. This time, it's extra marital hanky-panky he's after and he knows, like a book, exactly how to avoid the pitfalls and pratfalls of a bad situation, so he can enjoy some of the other women in his life without letting wifey know about it.The best part of the project are the "instructionals" offered to illustrate every situation Morse tells Matthau about, featuring cameos by the likes of Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Sid Caesar, Terry-Thomas, Jayne Mansfield, Phil Silvers, Louis Nye, and the one most people who view the film favor, Joey Bishop. Really, if this movie were just a series of these vignettes, it probably would have been that much better!But we're stuck with these two unhappy hubbys who are determined to gain a conquest, much like the mountain climber "...Because it's there!" That part of the story is tedious, repetitive and, much like their attempts to score their mistresses, ultimately unsatisfying. A Guide for the Married Man is most effective as a time capsule, a Hollywood spin on the mindset of the people in the suburbs in the mid 1960s, and what they did to break the boredom of that surreality, or at least what they imagined might break it. I don't know how many men actually were wannabe lotharios, and if you believe this film it's basically all of them! But it is supposed to be a comedy (albeit with only a few mild chuckles, unfortunately), so keep a grain of salt handy, along with the fast forward button on your remote.

moonspinner55 Married financial consultant, who hardly seems to notice his curvaceous, efficient wife at home, gets tips on cheating from his smarmy neighbor, a divorce lawyer. Somewhat unfair suburban comedy from writer Frank Tarloff gives us a group of neighborhood wives who congregate only to make chit-chat about what spoiled little boys their husbands are--only single women or divorcées are on the make. Accentuated by sketch gags and pantomime bits featuring an array of '60s celebrities, the film is a plush and cozy commercial (for many idle things, including Hertz Rent-a-Car). Walter Matthau does a few amusing double takes, and the finale--where he finally checks into a motel room with a woman--is funny; unfortunately, director Gene Kelly stages the leering material like old TV routines. The whole picture feels like a rerun. ** from ****

RResende I think i know what this was intended to be. This story and editing should swing in front of your eyes the same way Gene Kelly used to wing, literally, dancing in his past musicals. I tender the idea, the man uses the image the public has of him, and tries to be coherent with it, behind the camera. The story is about swingers, guys who dance around adversities, schemes to fool their wives, that environment where adultery is fun, and the good guy never falls for it, because deep down, he'll fall for the truth of loving his wife. So we're constantly shifting sets, and than turning to those sets, introducing new characters, telling stories which we don't know for sure happened, and that is made in a kind of frantic (for those days) succession. Kelly tries hard to keep editing up with the story, and i appreciate the effort, but he is not skilled enough to do this properly. This same year, Stanley Donen directed one remarkable piece of filmaking, which i think is essential, 'Two for the Road', he tried similar stuff, but he succeeded in ways Kelly couldn't do. There, Donen managed to control editing and storytelling in coherence. These two minds had been responsible for a great experience, Singin' in the rain. By this film, and "two for the road", we understand they knew they could get somewhere else. Donen did it but this is just a try.My opinion: 2/5 http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

Merwyn Grote A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN is a period piece, a relic of a time gone by. It is set in a brief American era of the 1960s when sophistication was marked by the three-martini lunch, where male wit and style were drawn from the pages of Playboy; and where the war between men and women was a naughty little game played as part of The Good Life in suburbia, not a cultural one fought in the board rooms and the court rooms. Every bit as artificial in its glib amorality as a Norman Rockwell painting is in its ambiance of homey traditionalism, A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN is about adultery, not as a thou-shall-not commandment, but as a sporting event. And though it views adultery as a dangerous game, not without its risks; A GUIDE also views it as a male challenge that must be met, because, in the words of one character, "she's there!"Structurally, the film is an old-fashioned throwback to the days when a studio would concoct a movie designed to showcase its stars in bite-size appearances; either in musical faux-biographies like ZIEGFELD FOLLIES and NIGHT AND DAY or in episodic comedies like IF I HAD A MILLION and WE'RE NOT MARRIED. Considering the film is smoothly directed with assured style by studio-bred legend Gene Kelly, such a variety show format is not that surprising. In this case, instead of putting on a show, the framing story involves Walter Matthau as a mostly happily married man with a seven year itch. He is married to a perfect wife in the very attractive form of the perfectly vivacious Inger Stevens. Yet he wants cake that he can both have and eat, because, to paraphrase, "you'd get tired of steak, if you didn't have fish once in awhile." To teach the old dog his new tricks, enter Robert Morse as the impish, married swinger-next-door to provide sagely advise on how to best weave webs of deceit. In teaching Matthau the dos and don'ts of cheating, Morse offers up numerous "I once knew this guy who ..."-style urban legends, all illustrated via comic vignettes by a cast of wonderful "technical advisors," including Wally Cox, Art Carney, Lucille Ball, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Ben Blue, Polly Bergen and Louis Nye, among others. While all the skits are very funny, a few are tiny comic masterpieces: Jack Benny in "How to break it off;" Joey Bishop in "Deny, deny, deny;" Carl Reiner in "You can never be TOO careful!" and Terry-Thomas and Jayne Mansfield illustrating why adultery should never be a home-based hobby. The film skillfully walks the line between merely being a "Love, American Style" series of comic skits and telling a gently amusing story about a man cautiously testing the limitations of his middle class marriage and his middle American values. Yes, its approach to infidelity is dishonest and sexist and politically incorrect, but it all seems like good, clean fun compared to contemporary "sex comedies" that are defined by how far a film can push the bounds of being gross-out tasteless and raunchy. That is the quirky thing about A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN, it is strangely wholesome. There is a benign quality to its obsession with sex: no nudity, no profanity, really no sex -- even most of the bedrooms that are shown have twin beds. As lascivious as his quest for a dangerous liaison seems, there is something boyishly romantic about Matthau's lust. Mildly daring for its time, the film's approach to sex more reflects the innocent naughtiness of the Marilyn Monroe '50s than the strident feminist/politically correctness of the '70s. And like most such comedies, from THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH to BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE to SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR to "10", A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN is all flirtation and not copulation; it ultimately recognizes the fantasy of swinging, only to use it to reaffirm the sanctity of home, marriage and family.