This really has little to do with the infamous blackout of 1965 than a ridiculous story where a famous Broadway actress (Doris Day, who never appeared on Broadway), known as "the eternal virgin", questions her chastity when she goes on a drunken bender at her Connecticut home after believing that her husband Patrick O'Neal was cheating on her. It just so happens that a corporate head accountant Robert Morse happens to pop into her house to borrow the phone while she's having drunken hallucinations, and when her husband shows up, he believes the worst. The arrival of Day's sleazy agent (Terry-Thomas) makes things worse when he convinces Morse to lie on his behalf because he wants to have a fling with Doo-Dah himself!
A tacky story starts off pretty funny with some interesting ideas of how regular New Yorkers and those stranded there dealt with the 12 hour blackout, but they really should have come up with a better script. Morse has a very funny pre-credit sequence where he manages to somehow avoid accidents along the busy sidewalks and streets of New York where his inabiity to pay attention nearly gets him killed, but instead creates chaos for everyone else around him. (An interesting visual considering how big city streets are navigated 50 years later....) What starts off promising (in spite of that dreadful title song) turns ridiculous and eye rolling as the situations just go from absolutely ridiculous to cringe worthy.
In spite of the way Doris was forced to do this charmless comedy, she comes off unscathed, gaining laughs and sympathy, the first for her over-the-top drunken sequence, and the second for the wretched script that she has been handed. The men in the story are not so lucky with Morse's character an obvious embezzler who somehow gets away with it, and O'Neal a complete cheat. Terry-Thomas is the unluckiest of all, his character amoral and creepy beyond reproach. Poor Thomas had to deal with cracks about his dental work in addition to playing a character who was probably disowned by his parents. This is not Doris's worst film (that would be "Caprice"), but I do rank it as her number two, in more ways than one.
A tacky story starts off pretty funny with some interesting ideas of how regular New Yorkers and those stranded there dealt with the 12 hour blackout, but they really should have come up with a better script. Morse has a very funny pre-credit sequence where he manages to somehow avoid accidents along the busy sidewalks and streets of New York where his inabiity to pay attention nearly gets him killed, but instead creates chaos for everyone else around him. (An interesting visual considering how big city streets are navigated 50 years later....) What starts off promising (in spite of that dreadful title song) turns ridiculous and eye rolling as the situations just go from absolutely ridiculous to cringe worthy.
In spite of the way Doris was forced to do this charmless comedy, she comes off unscathed, gaining laughs and sympathy, the first for her over-the-top drunken sequence, and the second for the wretched script that she has been handed. The men in the story are not so lucky with Morse's character an obvious embezzler who somehow gets away with it, and O'Neal a complete cheat. Terry-Thomas is the unluckiest of all, his character amoral and creepy beyond reproach. Poor Thomas had to deal with cracks about his dental work in addition to playing a character who was probably disowned by his parents. This is not Doris's worst film (that would be "Caprice"), but I do rank it as her number two, in more ways than one.