How to sum up this turkey? Pastel capri pants, the twist, bouffant hair, chewing gum pop music with lyrics like "I'll take Sweden -- ya, ya, ya." California: real locations. Sweden: back projections. Well, maybe that gets the general idea across but we're still left with the plot.
It's best described as a clash between cultures. Two, in fact. One is generational. Bob Hope is a morally upright well-to-do executive (or something) whose daughter, the toothsome and toothy Tuesday Weld, is anxious for marriage or at least a taste of the thrills that go with it. Hope sweeps her up with him and they fly to Sweden to escape the plans of Frankie Avalon, a broke biker who wants to settle down with her. Rather than marriage to a kid who sings song like that, her quaint honour should turn to dust, and into ashes all his lust.
The other conflict is cultural in the anthropological sense. At the time, pre-marital intercourse was accepted as normal in Sweden, while America was still in the grip of the virginity mystique. Jeremy Slate is the handsome young host of Hope and his daughter in Sweden. Slate wants Weld to give it up before marriage. She's torn -- between two choices, that is. I won't give away the ending and deprive you your gasp of surprise.
I -- I'm stumped in an attempt to rationalize the movie's popularity. It isn't that movie like this can't be done as effective comedies. "Take Her, She's Mine," had Jimmy Stewart and Sandra Dee in a similar embarrassment and it was slyly funny. It's that the jokes here, on which the entire enterprise depends, are so unfunny.
One example, then I quit. Slate picks up Hope and Weld when they arrive in Sweden but there isn't room enough for all of them plus their luggage in the Volkswagon beetle, so Hope has to stand up with his torso sticking out of the sun roof. A school bus pulls alongside and a little boy squirts Hope with a water pistol. Hope rolls his eyes and remarks, "Don't they have rest stops on that bus?" The end.
It's best described as a clash between cultures. Two, in fact. One is generational. Bob Hope is a morally upright well-to-do executive (or something) whose daughter, the toothsome and toothy Tuesday Weld, is anxious for marriage or at least a taste of the thrills that go with it. Hope sweeps her up with him and they fly to Sweden to escape the plans of Frankie Avalon, a broke biker who wants to settle down with her. Rather than marriage to a kid who sings song like that, her quaint honour should turn to dust, and into ashes all his lust.
The other conflict is cultural in the anthropological sense. At the time, pre-marital intercourse was accepted as normal in Sweden, while America was still in the grip of the virginity mystique. Jeremy Slate is the handsome young host of Hope and his daughter in Sweden. Slate wants Weld to give it up before marriage. She's torn -- between two choices, that is. I won't give away the ending and deprive you your gasp of surprise.
I -- I'm stumped in an attempt to rationalize the movie's popularity. It isn't that movie like this can't be done as effective comedies. "Take Her, She's Mine," had Jimmy Stewart and Sandra Dee in a similar embarrassment and it was slyly funny. It's that the jokes here, on which the entire enterprise depends, are so unfunny.
One example, then I quit. Slate picks up Hope and Weld when they arrive in Sweden but there isn't room enough for all of them plus their luggage in the Volkswagon beetle, so Hope has to stand up with his torso sticking out of the sun roof. A school bus pulls alongside and a little boy squirts Hope with a water pistol. Hope rolls his eyes and remarks, "Don't they have rest stops on that bus?" The end.