I wanted to but couldn't!

Captivating movie !

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Anyone expecting a sex farce, even one rendered innocuous by the censorship of the time, will find this not only a disappointing but a sobering experience. Instead of the colour one would expect for a comedy, it is in serious black and white, and what one takes away from it is not the naughtiness of illicit love but the grimness, frustration and boredom of middle-aged suburban marriage. These, along with bratty and selfish children, are made so plain that it's no wonder Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, married to others, are drawn together when they unexpectedly find themselves alone on a tropic vacation. While tedious, jokey happenings result in their never consummating their affair, either then or in later attempts, the movie never achieves a genuinely comic tone. It is sour and depressed, and when the two decide that it's wrong to hurt the ones they love (although the whole point of their getting together is that they love each other, not their spouses) they return to their lawful homes with a feeling of duty rather than joy. This is typical of the time--that period before the Sixties really got started. One could now acknowledge the formerly unsayable--that marriage was boring and even nice, good people had extra-marital urges. But it was still too soon to say that such urges should be acted on, so the urges are stamped on with a lot of unconvincing moralizing, which sounds more like fear than morality.Bob Hope, at 57, was too old for this story of couples married fifteen years who are the parents of small children. Lucy, at 50, looks much closer to the early-forties housewife she is supposed to be. But both are wrong for these sort of parts--having to play serious, Hope is merely stern and repressed. He was always the businessman among comedians, and in this he is all businessman. Lucy's character is as phoney as her whisk-broom eyelashes--she comes across as selfish and hard.The phoniness of the whole enterprise can be summed up in the situation that brings Bob and Lucy together. They are unexpectedly alone when illness and emergencies strike their spouses and another couple with whom they always go on vacation. And why do the three couples always do this? Because, we are told, these people, who live in huge, comfortable houses, have servants, and belong to the country club, could not otherwise afford to go away! Talk about writers who were not even trying!

After Bob Hope made THAT CERTAIN FEELING the general trend of his films as far as being worthy of the talent he had and of the best of his work was gone. In the future would be films like CANCEL MY RESERVATION. There was one more film with Bing and Dorothy Lamour, THE ROAD TO HONG KONG, but even that film was below par for the series (one wonders what the proposed final "Road" film - THE ROAD TO TOMORROW - would have been like). There was, however, this film...again not quite the film with Hope that one expected, but sturdy because of the support he shared with his leading lady, Lucille Ball.THE FACTS OF LIFE is the story of two people who share a midlife crisis. Hope is married to Ruth Hussey and Ball is married to Don DeFore. Both have children, and both seem reasonably well settled in their marriages (Ball's sole reason for complaining about DeFore is his gambling habits). Both couples are in the upper middle class of 1960 suburban America, belonging to the local country club, and going on shared vacations with their best friends. A trip is planned to Acupulco but Hussey stays home to take care of her ailing son, and DeFore is forced by his boss to take over operations of the San Francisco office after the person there is injured in a car accident. So Hope and Ball travel with Philip Ober and his wife to Mexico. But the latter two get what appears to be Montezuma's Revenge, and Hope and Ball are thrown together to try to salvage the vacation. Although they have occasionally been caustic about each other, they find they really get along quite nicely. In fact, after Ball lands a huge Marlin fish with Hope's assistance, and go touring the town, they find they really like each other. And a small affair begins.What follows is Hope and Ball trying to keep their raging/aging hormones in check, and yet still occasionally get together. This includes two funny sequences at a drive-in theater, and later Hope desperately trying to remember which roadside motel he left Ball in after a dinner dance. Finally they decide to take advantage of the Christmas holidays to make some plans. Will Ball leave DeFore for Hope, or will they find they can't shake responsibilities that come from being middle aged?Hope is not totally subdued in this film. At the start he actually is playing a scene in a familiar role: he is the master of ceremonies at a country club dinner. His comments regarding winning sportsman Louis Nye are sharp ones. So are his attempts to speed a cub scout meeting he has to chair (he wants to get together with Ball) but he is forced to listen to one of the scouts read a long, dull report about smoke signals. Ball is also good, particularly towards the end when she starts lecturing Hope about how much better DeFore is as a mechanic. The rest of the cast is good, DeFore dismissing his gambling habit (he plays craps downstairs during the opening awards dinner, and thinks nothing about losing $200.00). Nye is fun as a philandering husband with a trusting, nitwit wife. On the whole the film is quite adult in its point of view, and may be the last really good film that Hope made in his career in movies.

I was surprised by this film and the quality of work by its two stars. We always think of Lucy as goofy or screwy and Hope either swinging a golf club or playing wingman for Bing Crosby. Billed as a romantic comedy, Hope and Ball aim for the funny bone. But there are some serious adult issues raised. This tasty confection, made in 1960, I think is a lot of fun (though it could have been better paced and the contrivances are a bit much) and it has two terrific old pros at work in roles that you just wouldn't expect them to be in. Lucy looked pretty good when she got all dolled up. And Hope is ageless as ever. I thought they had some chemistry between them. Also includes Ruth Hussey, Louie Nye and Dom DeFore (Ozzie and Harriet's neighbor).

This is a pretty good movie, as far as situation comedies go. Very typical of the movies Hope was making at that time. Pepole who have only seen the Hope and Crosby Road shows think Hops did only one-liner jokes, actually more of his movies were in the vein of this one. I watched all these movies when they came out in the theaters. I started watching Ball and Hope in movies when I was 8 years old, and they were young people. Mostly, I get a kick out of reading the reader comments. Mature for it's time, Advanced for movies made in that era etc. This was NOT considered a racy movie for the times. There were many with a much more " like today's movies" story line and script. The bedroom farce movies were being made and shown to general public audiences i the 40, and take a look at some of the movies made in the late 20s and 30s, before censorship stepped in. They didn't use swear words and the language they use today in movies in the 30s, but those people made some really "broad minded?" movies then. This was just a run of the mill, cutest movie of the times. If you liked Hope in this, you will also like, That Certain Feeling-- 1956-- Bob Hope and Eva Maire Saint The Iron Pettycoat---- 1956-- Bob Hope and Katherine Hepburn I'll Take Sweden------ 1965-- Bob Hope, Dina merrill You don't want to over look Bob Hope in Beau James--- 1957. Tis is the story of the flamboyant mayor of New York City.