Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Fresh and Exciting

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Imagine Marvin Kaplan playing a gangster in film?This was absolutely an inane farce with Farley Granger and Shelley Winters. In the same year that she made the memorable "A Place in the Sun," Shelley got herself into this one mess of a film.The mother-in-law steals the film as she conveys what the traditional mother-in-law is supposed to convey- constant criticism of the in-law and non-stop trouble.In a ridiculous fashion, Granger gets caught up with counterfeiters when he accidentally comes upon the dog they need to make their counterfeit transaction. Winters is his wife and William Demarest is the wily head of the police bureau.No matter where the gullible Granger goes, murder seems to follow. In fact, this is just what this mess of a movie is-just murder to view.

A romantic comedy in which a scruffy dog is a central player. Already I feel a suspicion of nausea uncoiling deep in my innards. A funny movie about a dog.But it's not the dog that keeps the film from being better than it is. It's the writer/director, George Beck, who does his earnest best to turn a feature film into a television situation comedy.Comedy is obviously not Farley Granger's forte. He's fine as an innocent and exploited schlub -- "Strangers on a Train," "Rope," "They Live By Night." Here he overacts, loudly, and the director should have reined him in. Not that he could have saved the script, which has him walking along a crowded sidewalk and talking to himself while everyone stares. I'm not even sure that Spencer Tracy could have handled the role as written.And something could have been done with the narrative. In itself, it has potential. A dog trained to sniff out dope at dropout points escapes and attaches itself to Granger and his wife, Shelley Winters. Rival teams of gangsters try to recover the dog. It's all in your face but with a bit more subtlety in the gags and the acting it could have been much improved.But Beck seems to think it's funnier than it is. I don't know how many minutes are spent on a scene near the beginning. It's the wedding anniversary of Granger and Winters. They want to make love but they can't coax the pestilent Archie out of the bedroom. Granger throws shoes into the hallway, tries to coax him out the door, tugs him along, but there is no getting rid of Archie. It's amusing, not funny, and doesn't deserve the screen time it gets. At that, it's an improvement over the incident in which Archie gets tangled in Granger's feet and Granger has to fall down a flight of stairs. Not even Ricky Ricardo was so humiliated.Some of the better scenes involve small parts played by familiar actors doing their usual shticks. Sheldon Leonard is a hard-boiled Damon Runyan hood, "Shortwave Bert." Elijah Cook, Jr., is the goggle-eyed loser and an unexpected Francis X. Sullivan is a big-time hood, "Fat Freddy."

"Young newlyweds Bill and Kate Denny (Farley Granger and Shelley Winters) take in a stray dog named Archie. Archie is really a trained dog that is a go-between for two rival gangs of criminals. With a million-dollar counterfeiting scheme causing hostilities between the two gangs, our newlyweds and their adopted dog are thrown into the middle of the mix," according to the DVD sleeve summary. The more dramatically inclined co-stars have a lot of range, but it doesn't show in "Behave Yourself!" Most of the time, they seem out of their element. Made a few years earlier, with Cary Grant and Lucille Ball starring, this might have been a classic.***** Behave Yourself! (9/19/51) George Beck ~ Farley Granger, Shelley Winters, Margalo Gillmore, William Demarest

I was actually surprised at how funny this comedy was--I guess I wasn't expecting much. Still, I laughed out loud several times. Shelly Winters proves grating at times with her one-note performance, but Farley Granger (looking as sexy as ever)proves to be extremely good at comedy. However, the single best performance in this movie is given by Archie, the dog, who is crucial to the plot. And he's not even listed in the credits on this website! (I actually looked the movie up on IMDb just because I wanted to see if Archie was in other films. And I've never, ever done that for a DOG before.) Elisha Cook Jr. is very welcome in a cameo role, but is not given nearly enough to do.