To Paris with Love (1955) Movie Review Movie Review

To Paris with Love (1955)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Alec Guinness and Vernon Gray in To Paris with Love (1955)

Lacking Love and Fun

Col. Sir Edgar Fraser (Alec Guinness - The Ladykillers) has decided to take his son, John (Vernon Gray), to Paris, France to try and find a wife for him as he has lived a bit of a sheltered wife. And it doesn't take long for him to meet Lizette (Odile Versois), a shop worker. But whilst his father is trying to match make for his son his son has decided that his widowed father needs to find a new wife and with his friend's help hopes to introduce him to Sylvia Gilbert (Elina Labourdette). But with Lizette working for Sylvia in her high end establishment all these attempts at match making leads to wise being crossed.

"To Paris with Love" is one of those movies which isn't bad but being isn't bad is extremely frustrating. You see the set up to "To Paris with Love" is simply one of those classic romantic confusion comedies as when John and his father both try and set each other up, the women get the wrong end of the stick and so Lizette thinks she is going to date John whilst Sylvia thinks she is going to be dating his son. But the humour has sadly been written with a blunt pencil, lacking the sharpness to really make this as funny as it could have been. In fact considering the talent in "To Paris with Love" this ends up remarkably lacking in humour and at times just drifts along, losing the audience in the process.

Odile Versois in To Paris with Love (1955)

The thing is that "To Paris with Love" has a lot going for it with Alec Guinness doing a nice job of playing a leading man with a mix of every day about him yet also being debonair. The sets are also well chosen with a great look with what looks like some great backdrops. But because so many of the jokes fail to raise even a giggle the movie just doesn't click and even simple gags surrounding getting drenched by a road cleaner fail to make you laugh. Just as bad are the romantic scenes as these are as dreary as the comedy and as such you are constantly waiting for some thing really good to happen

What this all boils down to is that "To Paris with Love" sadly doesn't create much love with me and ends up a movie which lacks to be either romantic or funny with even the confusion of misunderstandings adding to the disappointment.


LATEST REVIEWS