You won't be disappointed!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Producer: Henry Koster. Copyright 3 November 1963 by 20th Century- Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Criterion and the Trans-Lux (and other theaters): 13 November 1963. U.S. release: November 1963. U.K. release: 26 January 1964. Sydney opening at the Regent. 8,789 feet. 89 minutes.SYNOPSIS: This is the story of the frustrations of a father, sending his "dish" of a daughter to college. The father, Frank Michaelson (James Stewart), is a respected lawyer and chairman of the School Board, who is called to account by Hector G. Ivor (John McGiver), vice chairman of the School Board, because of flamboyant publicity regarding Frank's strange behavior. Michaelson had been reported arrested for participating in a riotous sit-in strike over banned books, arrested with an alleged Chinese mistress in Paris and jumping into the River Seine in what appears to be the nude. A newspaper editorial demands he resign from the Board. It is Michaelson's explanation of these episodes that is the story of "Take Her, She's Mine".Michaelson and his wife Anne (Audrey Meadows) find their lives complicated by that fact that they are the parents of a "dish", Mollie (Sandra Dee) and a budding "dish", Liz (Charla Doherty). The father is bent on protecting Mollie at all costs, unaware that most of his fears result from an overly alive imagination.NOTES: Fox's top domestic money-spinner of 1963-64.The play opened on Broadway at the Biltmore on 21 December 1961, running for a most satisfactory 404 performances. George Abbott directed Art Carney, Elizabeth Ashley, Phyllis Thaxter and June Harding. The Ephrons, former staff writers at Fox, sold the screen rights of the play to their old studio for $350,000. The Ephrons themselves served as the basis for the play's parents, their daughter Nora was the model for Mollie, whilst the actual college was Wellesley. (Ephron of course was also a Fox producer. His credits: Carousel, The Best Things in Life Are Free, Desk Set, 23 Paces to Baker Street, Sing Boy Sing and A Certain Smile).COMMENT: I don't suppose any film genre dates so badly as a sex comedy. Today's taboos are tomorrow's ho-hums. But "Take Her" is impossible. Here's a movie that was archly old-hat even at the time it was made. Despite many attempts to be with it and titillatingly daring, the script persistently falls pathetically flat. Old-time pratfalls, weak puns that even Shakespeare would have rejected, gags that are painstakingly telegraphed five or ten minutes ahead, impossibly naive to the point of boneheaded and stupid characters — these are just some of the "Take Her" vices that make even the dullest of TV sitcoms look positively bright and breezy by comparison. All Nunnally Johnson seems to have done is to aggravate an already over-wordy stage play by adding lots more dull and downright tedious padding. Koster's heavy-handed direction worsens the situation no end. As does Stewart's mannered acting. Production values are extremely moderate, whilst even normally reliable credits like photography and sets are as dull and uninteresting as the script. Despite the movie's enormous popularity, I find it difficult to credit that even the most indulgent picture=goer would find much amusement here. "Take Her" is not just your ordinary ham-fisted farce, it's a complete and utter waste of time.

I usually get a laugh out of this cornball material because the Ephrons have done such a good job on the script, Jimmy Stewart is in his element as the perplexed and grouchy father, and, as his daughter, Sandra Dee was a 1950s icon, with her magnificent bosom and fruity New Jersey voice.The story, briefly: Dee leaves her bourgeois home in Pacific Palisades and goes to a fancy woman's college in New England to study art. He letters home indicate that she has met boys and a mysterious telegram arrives at 2:30 in the morning explaining that all charges have been dropped and she's been released. Puzzled and irritated, Stewart flies East where he's introduced to Beatnik coffee houses and sit ins for free speech.Dee flunks out and gets an art scholarship to Paris, where she hooks up with a young man who must be handsome because he resembles Warren Beatty. Of course, he's an aristocrat and terribly wealthy too, so we know the movie will end expectably. Before that happens, Stewart flies to Paris to check on her, gets arrested in a French whore house, and is photographed jumping in his underwear from a tourist boat on the Seine.It was about this time that Stewart made a couple of family comedies -- this one, "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation," and "Dear Bridget." This is the best of the three, by far. Stewart's appeal was fading because he was getting older, as all of us are. He had some good movies ahead of him but few involved romance. Cast as a naive lover, as in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence," he seemed out of place, not because of anything in his performances.He plays the same role here, essentially, as in "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" -- the pompous, self-righteous, thoroughly conventional father who is unable to cope with the social changes taking place around him. He can't bring himself to use the word "virgin" in front of his post-pubescent daughter. He's the guy who querulously demands to know why Dee's mother, Audrey Meadows, hasn't had one of those "talks" with her daughter to explain the birds and the bees. I swear I'm not making that up.The script is a lot funnier than the other attempts at comedy, which were pretty low brow. I'll give an example. Stewart visits a coffee shop in which Dee is employed as a singer and dishwasher. It's all very innocent but Stewart has reason to believe that Dee is a stripper. Peeved but sly, he asks the waiter if the girls take off their clothes. "No -- if they did, who would look at them? I'd rather look at my Aunt Minnie." Now Stewart is piqued. He collars the young kid and demands an apology. "Why? What's it to you if I don't look at them?" Stewart explains he's Dee's father. "You mean you WANT me to look at them?" Absolutely not! Stewart replies that he doesn't want the waiter to look at his daughter naked but he resents the implication that his daughter isn't worth looking at naked. It sounds silly, but the exchange is really amusing and Stewart and Bob Denver handle it perfectly.I find it curious, too, the way the film balances itself so delicately on the old-fashioned values of the 1950s and the revolution of youth in the 1960s. Stewart represents the former and Dee gradually changes from complacency to independence.Nice job.

During a three year stretch, James Stewart made three comedies--three films that just didn't seem to suit his talents all that well. The problem with MR. HOBBES TAKES A VACATION, DEAR BRIGETTE and TAKE HER SHE'S MINE is that they all try too hard to be kooky. There is no subtlety about them and Stewart essentially plays the same befuddled role three different times. While none of these films are terrible, compared to his other wonderful films, they just seem to come up very short.TAKE HER SHE'S MINE begins with Stewart explaining to the local council about all the publicity he's recently received. So, in a long, long series of flashbacks, Stewart explains away potentially damaging news reports as just misunderstandings--all which incidentally occurred while he was following his daughter (Sandra Dee) at college because he was worried she would become a "loose woman". Again and again, he assumes she is much more of a libertine than she is, yet he ends up getting arrested on morals charges himself.While the idea of a worrying father having trouble letting go of his daughter is a clever idea, the execution and style leaves so much to be desired. Instead of great insight into a father's worries or simply making a clever film, too ofter the film degenerates towards kookiness and cheap laughs. In many ways, this movie looks and feels much more like a sitcom minus the annoying laugh-track.The bottom line is that Stewart was an amazing actor whose films are quite often brilliant and sublime. Sadly, not everything he made was gold and it's hard to imagine that just after making THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, he made these silly pieces of fluff. Watchable yet dopey.

A naive teen provides plenty of excitement for her well intentioned Dad, who tries keeping her on an even keel. Fun for die hard fans of Jimmy Stewart, like me. Originally, a play which starred Art Carney and Elizabeth Ashley, who won a Tony for her performance.