Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Hard to say this film set women's rights back 100 years because it portrays a no nonsense woman who knows what she wants and won't settle for less. You do not see this type of behavior at ALL these days. Most women accept that men have a double standard and let them be treated like chattel. Maybe marriage, kids, and loving your husband is an antiquated goal in life but for some this film shows gumption.I found the dialog witty and entertaining, the women most beautiful, and Frank's singing divine. I guess I am a big sucker for any project involving Debbie Reynolds, she is a mega talent. It all started when I first saw her in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and was mesmerized.So even if you find this movie's message subservient, I found it uplifting and inspirational. Be strong with your aspirations and let those dogs lay sleeping. Whipit good DR!! haha

This is yet another smarmy Hollywood movie where a young woman falls for an older guy and everything is supposed to be oh so cute simply because that's the premise. In real life, Sinatra was 17 years older than Reynolds. They don't seem to have much in common in this movie, but Hollywood has always loved this combination of young women with older men (both on screen and off). At least with Bogart and Bacall, there was some chemistry. I understand why this improbable pairing appeals to some men, but it certainly doesn't appeal to all women. Why doesn't Hollywood make movies about guys falling in love with older women? Sunset Boulevard is not what I had in mind. If you like mindless fluff with improbable plots, then this is a movie for you, but if you like movies with substance, don't bother with this.

When Frank Sinatra's real film career (the one that starts with MEET DANNY Wilson and FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and SUDDENLY) got started, his comedies generally improved. Instead of playing the eternally naive heartthrob that the bobby-soxers supposedly enjoyed (but is actually quite annoying in films like ANCHORS AWEIGH), he found that his sophistication could carry a better style of comedy. Ahead of him was HIGH SOCIETY, OCEAN'S ELEVEN, COME BLOW YOUR HORN, ROBIN AND THE SEVEN HOODS, where he was usually in control of the situations rather than pulled about by mechanical plot twists based on his stupidity. And THE TENDER TRAP is an early example of this switch.Sinatra's Charlie Reader is a successful talent agent, and his success is mirrored in his apartment facing the 59th Street Bridge in Manhattan, and his colorful lifestyle of a different date with a different woman (Celeste Holms, Lola Albright, Caroline Jones, and Jarma Lewis) every night. His trade comment of "A ring-a-ding-ding" is not voiced here, but it could easily be said. Like his character of the older brother in COME BLOW YOUR HORN, he is inviting an old childhood pal (like his younger brother in the later film) named Joe McCall (David Wayne). But the younger brother in the later film is intoxicated by the glamor of Sinatra's lifestyle. Eventually the younger brother actually makes Sinatra ashamed of his own lifestyle as the younger brother takes it to extremes. Here, Wayne is in the middle of a mid-life crisis, and he's actually hoping to enjoy Sinatra's lifestyle, but as the film progresses gradually realizes that Sinatra's habits mistreat many women. Sinatra may be a great swinger, but he is something of a sexual pig.But Frank's lifestyle is beginning to show cracks. In COME BLOW YOUR HOME it was a matter of his aging (Lee J. Cobb fuming that he's a bum because he's unmarried and approaching 40). Here it is his meeting a young actress named Julie Gillis (Debbie Reynolds) that he starts dating. Sinatra looks at Julie (at least at first) as just another lady on his weekly list. But he slowly finds he does not want her to consider his other girlfriends, and he also wants her to be available to him. But his interest is tempered when he discovers she is only interested in him dating her and only her...with the intention of only marrying her.Sinatra goes crazy here - not babbling but losing his cool thoroughly. He tries to forget her quickly, by picking up one of the other regular girls, only to find that Jones has met a fellow who is going to marry her, and Albright has another regular date. Holms (as Sylvia Crewes) shows up. Oddly enough she is willing to accept the one sided dating system that Sinatra has chosen, because she is aware that she is now 33 and the chances of getting a fellow to marry her are quite rare. She lists the types to Wayne, and none are very appetizing. Sinatra proposes marriage to a shocked Holms, who (somewhat shakily) agrees. Sinatra decides to throw a huge party, even inviting his other occasional date Lewis to it. But in the middle of getting the party under way he runs downstairs and smack into Reynolds. She decides she loves him despite his selfishness, but he announces that he loves her as well...and proposes to her. She heads home, promising to see her fiancé in the morning, and he proceeds to wonder what to do now that he's affianced to two women.It turns out to be a disaster, but it is deserved. I won't go into the rest of the plot, but things do work out. It is nice to see Tom Hellmore, soon to be the notorious Elstin Draper in VERTIGO, in a far nicer role her. Also the conclusion of the film, with the now standard Jimmy Van Husen theme song being sung by Sinatra, Reynolds, Holms, and Wayne (with a sorrowful chorus of Albright, Lewis, and Jones) bears comparison to the singing by Cameron Diaz and her three bridesmaids at the start of MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING for being so fresh and unexpected. It was a top notch comedy, and another step upward for Sinatra in the rebuilding and expansion of his film career.

The tender trap is a Sinatra film, a fifties time capsule. As such, it comes fully loaded with a swinger versus good girl mentality. The woman always wants the picket fence and the man always wants the ultimate bachelor lifestyle (in Sinatra's case, complete with sexy dog-walkers and cheese delivery). So with this sort of fluffy 50's movie, it's easy to scoff and call it outdated and campy, and neglect to consider the fact that perhaps there lingers in it the tragedy of the era. My apologies for melodrama. But in the character of Sylvie (the unforgettable Celeste Holmes) is there encompassed a certain element of poignance that is strange to find in such a film as this.In the midst of the predictable plot and romantic mayhem sorted out so simply, perhaps by fate, perhaps by unimaginative writing. But in Celeste Holmes is there contained something deeper. A regret, hopelessness, I'll-settle-for-anything quality of the middle-aged (or thereabouts) successful career woman who didn't go for a family right away, and thus finds herself condemned to either "Married men. Drunks. Pretty boys looking for someone to support them. Lunatics looking for their fifth divorce!" or a Sinatra. To see her sitting at a table across from Debbie Reynolds, 21, with all her plan figured out beforehand, claiming that without such precautions a woman runs the risk of spinsterhood. You can't help but feel for the spinster herself as she gazes with quiet desperation at Sinatra. Her last hope.Yes The Tender Trap had quite a few weaknesses, but in all, I can't help but find it strange and lovely to find such fluff encrusted poignance. Sinatra and Debbie were cute, but when it came down to it, Celeste Holmes was magnificent.