Pretty Good

I wanted to but couldn't!

A Masterpiece!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The plot for "Good Neighbor Sam" is quite simple and very funny. Sam Bissell (Jack Lemmon) just has to pose as Howard Ebbets (Mike Connors). "Howie" is the recently divorced husband of Janet (Romy Schneider). Janet is the girlhood best friend of Sam's wife, Minerva (Dorothy Provine). The ruse is just to be for a few days to fool a private detective (Louis Nye) that Janet's cousins Jack (Charles Lane) and Irene (Anne Seymour) have hired to spy on the Ebbets. The cousins have greed in their minds, because if Janet isn't happily married to her hubby, she forfeits the $15 million inheritance she is to receive from her uncle's will. The cousins would be next in line to get the dough. The ID switch is concocted after Janet flies into San Francisco from Paris to settle her uncle's estate. She hasn't seen "Minny" since "Min" and Sam were married several years before. Sam and Min have a couple of daughters who have just gone off to camp for a week. This is plain enough and would be sufficient for a good comedy by itself. But more complications enter with Sam's job in an advertising agency when his false marriage comes into play. The agency's new big client, Simon Nurdlinger (Edward G. Robinson) is looking for the perfect wholesome, clean and happily married family for a big ad campaign that Sam dreamed up in the first place. And, the agency photographer snaps the make-believe couple as Janet drops Sam off at work. The real Howard comes looking for his recently divorced wife in hopes of a reunion. Now the ruse involves a foursome. This confuses the neighbors, the milkman, the mailman and any number of others when the switched couples leave their next door homes in the morning. But the humor reaches a crescendo when Sam's neighbor and coworker, Earl (Robert Q. Lewis) points out the new billboards around the city that have Sam and Janet's picture as Mr. and Mrs. Bissell who endorse Nurdlinger milk. If the detective the cousins hired sees that Sam is not Howard Ebbets, Janet's $15 million will go down the drain. The detective has cornered Sam and for $500 he will give him the photos he took of Sam sneaking over from his house (Janet's) at night for a rendezvous with the neighbor's wife (Min, his real wife and home). That's before Howie appears on the scene, whom the detective thinks is Mr. Bissell. Sam will gladly pay the detective the $500 rather than have him learn about the ruse and earn a big chunk for getting the $15 million for his clients, Janet's cousins. Oh, yes. Janet is going to give Min and Sam $1 million of her inheritance for being such good friends and helping her carry off the ruse. What follows next is some of the best action comedy ever filmed. Sam is giving the detective a ride home when Sam spots the first billboard. He does a quick turn so the detective won't see it. Sam's car is a convertible, and the two go on a continuous zigzag speeding course reminiscent of Keystone Kops scenes from an old silent film. After dropping off the disheveled detective, Sam arrives at home and loads ladders, paint buckets, brushes, pails and coveralls in his car. They have to paint over the faces on a dozen major billboards around the city at night – before the next morning. Min and Howie have had enough. The money doesn't mean that much to them. But Sam and Janet tear off on a jaunt that just keeps the laughter rolling. They paint funny faces, Frankenstein monsters and weird and hilarious faces on the billboards. Watching this, I realized that Columbia Pictures actually had such billboards made and put up somewhere, and that they shot at different locations as the two performers painted the very funny faces. There are some other surprise twists in this as well. Even though this description gives the plot away, it won't detract from one's enjoyment of this film. The comedy is mostly in the situations and action. What a great laugh vehicle this film is. It's a wonderful comedy to have in any film collection. The kids should enjoy the running around, face painting, car scenes and Sam's gizmo in his backyard.

"Good Neighbor Sam" (1964) 131 minutes (2:11) comedy starring Jack Lemmon *(Possible Spoilers)*Recently ordered the VHS from Amazon and watched it for the first time since I was ...uh, much younger. Still "cute" and amusing in a 1964 kind of way. Has some great moments, but also could be tightened up considerably by today's standards. A wide variety of sound stage, backlot and real city streets were used in the filming, so the production values are very "stagey" in some scenes. Yet it feels like the director tried to break it up with different camera angles in several scenes of the same location. An awful lot of "rear projection" shots for traffic scenes, though; and yet-- a series of comedic vignettes throughout the movie actually call attention to the "R.P." as if on purpose! Some of the action scenes are exaggerated through the use of accelerated camera speed. Such shots may remind you of "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."Story and plot? Actually, quite good for it's day. I'd call it "sophisticated slapstick." Sure there are a few holes in the plot, but it's a comedy, not a biblical epic! I'd say for 1964 this was probably very, very good. (And, hey! Martinis are "in" all over again in 2003! ;-)Jack Lemmon plays a bored ad man, a lowly creative type in the - literal - bowels of the ad agency building where he works. The fates intervene to place him, quite suddenly, in the limelight as the new head of the agency's most important new account. But merry mix-ups ensue to confuse Lemmon's co-workers and his home life -- where hebecomes forced to assume the identity of his new French neighbor's husband! There's much more to it than that, of course, and once the plot drivers are set up, the story plays out in what today might seem a predictable fashion but what was probably fairly original in 1964.I enjoyed the attempts at injecting reality into the mix by getting out of the sound stage. Watch for scenes showing stylized bits of life behind the scenes at a big-city ad agency with important accounts; cars whizzing through the streets of a pre-"Bullitt" San Francisco; and the prototypical display of "California Suburbia" for Sam's own neighborhood. (Everyone seems to drive brand new cars there -- easy to pick out if you know your 1963-64 model cars. Although here I may be showing my age. ;-) It is an odd sort of feeling, in fact, to note some of the detail in the sets, set dressings and the wardrobe and fashions: if this were a "period" film shot today, I'd say they did their homework very well. But it was contemporary, "present day" story telling in 1964! Watch as well for "product placement." There's a surprising amount for way back in '64. Some of it is integral to the story; much is not.And it is simply amazing how many faces you will recognize... a veritable who's who of b-line and character actors like Louis Nye, Robert Q. Lewis and even Mike Connors-- ol' "Mannix" himself! Plus, the venerable Edward G. Robinson plays way against his usual type in his role as the important new ad agency client everyone sucks up to. But this is Lemmon's star vehicle, and he's in tip-top form here. It's "Ensign Pulver" AFTER the war! Overall, this is one of those movies about which the old folks say, "they just don't make 'em like that any more!"-DJQ 5/16/03

Jack Lemmon stands at the top of his profession when it comes to comedy. No other actor has his sense of timing or expressive manners to offer competition to the master. "Good Neighbor Sam" is Lemmon at his best. Playing the average guy next door who gets into all kinds of problems through mostly no fault of his own. Everyone will enjoy this movie and the other Lemmon films similar to it. I rated this a 7.

I also saw this movie as a child, and fell in love with it. I particularly liked the wacky gadgets Sam would build, and the theme song (by Frank De Vol) is very catchy. One time when it was on TV, I was able to make an audio tape of it on this crummy little portable real-to-real tape recorder my dad gave me. I played it so much that I was able to memorize whole lines of dialog - "you can't alter a man's death-bed request with a lot of childish spying and gossip. Now obviously this man and woman are husband and wife, Mr and Mrs Howard Ebbets, and as such, I set the distribution of the Lagerlof will for 9am tomorrow morning. Now good day..."It's nice to see Mike Connors in a pre-Mannix role, and you can never get enough of Louis Nye. Edward G Robinson does a good job of playing the wealthy dairyman, Mr Nurdlinger. Plus his participation gives the whole production a needed bit of weight. This is the kind of movie they're talking about when they say - "they don't make 'em like that anymore." And I say, it's our loss.