I'm going to skip the movie's plot details, most of you have already read the other reviews and/or seen the movie and know what it's about. What many of have also done is to see/take the movie completely out of context. For this you can be forgiven, unless you (a) grew up in the 1950s and/or (b) know who Peter De Vries was and/or (c) read his novel THE TUNNEL OF LOVE. De Vries was a successful writer of satire, on the staff of The New Yorker for some time, and wrote lots of satirical novels, including this one, first published in 1954, sharply poking fun at sophisticated sexual and social mores. The novel is set in Westport, Connecticut, where De Vries lived, and its depiction of sexual double standards, social life, euphemisms, booze, etc., is typical of the time period. A stage version was produced in 1957, and presumably to "water it down" a little for theater audiences, the ending was changed, which basically ruined the story. A year later the Doris Day/Richard Widmark movie version came out, using the play's watered-down feel-good ending and destroying the novel's biting satire. So if you regard this movie out of the context of its novel and its time period, you might be confused or disappointed.
Review of The Tunnel of Love
