HotToastyRag
I don't know why The Grass is Greener isn't a go-to classic comedy, like Some Like it Hot or It Happened One Night. It's darling! Based off the play by Hugh Williams and Margaret Vyner, it's hilarious, witty, charming, and endearing.Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are married and stuck in a minor rut. When Deborah meets an American tourist, their attraction is undeniable. Yes, I know, she has Cary Grant at home, so perhaps Robert Mitchum is the only man Hollywood could have cast to make her infidelity believable! Before long, Deb and Bob are having a hot-and-heavy affair, and to help him deal with the problem, Cary recruits the advice of his faithful butler Moray Watson and his flirtatious friend Jean Simmons.Every part of this movie is cute, even the song during the opening credits and Hardy Amies's beautiful costumes. The script is very funny, with a mixture of jokes, wry one-liners, and situational comedy. I'm not even a Deborah Kerr fan, but she's just as delightful in this movie as her three co-stars.Remember the split-screen scene in When Harry Met Sally when the four friends are on the phone? That scene was a re-make; the hilarious original can be found in The Grass is Greener. I highly recommend this cute comedy. After you watch it, maybe you'll adopt the phrase, "So I went to Harrods and bought a sponge!" in your household, as I have in mine.
kenjha
Royal British couple down on its luck raises funds by giving tours of its castle. It's fun watching the star quartet in this light comedy, amiably directed by Donen, who was right at home in this sort of material. It features some witty dialog that the stars deliver effortlessly. What keeps it from being better is that it is a bit too talky and stagy and it takes a while to really get going. The finale featuring a duel between Grant and Mitchum over Kerr is funny. Simmons seems to be having a ball in the role of a divorced woman in heat. Also amusing is Watson as the butler. Parental Warning: The opening credits include nudity!
jamdonahoo
This adult drawing room comedy is a bit of fluff. Light and inconsequential but funny. Deborah Kerr is excellent in her role as the bored and under appreciated wife of an English aristocrat, Cary Grant. They are struggling to keep the family estate intact by charging for guided tours. Can one really be bored with Cary Grant? Mitchum is the rich, virile American tourist who sweeps her off her feet. Jean Simmons plays the beautiful but rather ditsy friend of Kerr. Kerr tells her, "You can't play Scrabble, not with adults". The mink coat scene is worth watching as is the fishing scene. America versus England with a happy ending.
theowinthrop
This is a film that does try to be good - and it is actually amusing at points. The central story about the aristocrats finding interest in an American millionaire (Mitchum) and an old flame of Grant's (Simmons) had potential. But the problem was that the screenplay is too talky and too cerebral, but not (paradoxically) as complete as it should be.There are pages and pages of the dialog which are (frankly) long winded. Cary Grant is not amusing when explaining his behavior to people, even Deborah Kerr. Whatever emotional chemistry worked for them so wonderfully in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER is cut down considerably here.The additions of Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons does not really help. Mitchum's growing interest in Kerr, and her growing response to his seeing her in London is okay, but Simmons' relationship regarding Grant is not developed. We know they had an affair before he married her friend Kerr, and she has remained a friend of both, and she is funny regarding her open interest in sex, but why Grant's rejection of her is never really gone into. Also, at the tale end, there is the suggestion that Simmons and Mitchum might find each other a worthy lover. But nothing in the film really builds up to that final look between them! There are good moments - Grant and Mitchum going fishing, and muttering under their breaths about each other, and the business about the fur coat gift that Mitchum buys Kerr, and she tries to hide (and Simmons ends up wearing as her own). But the good moments are fragments. The duel scene towards the end is analyzed to death. It says a lot that the use of Noel Coward's song THE STATELY HOMES OF ENGLAND on the soundtrack at the start and end of the film is one of the highlights. One wishes Coward wrote the screenplay here - it might have been brighter or more consistent.Because the cast really tries I have given it a "7", but it is not as good a film as it should have been.