Honeymoon Hotel (1964)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) In the pantheon of 1960s sex comedies, Honeymoon Hotel seems a mere footnote—rarely broadcast, seldom seen and almost never mentioned as part of the corpus of movies that, in their own now-quaint ways, reinvented American cinema in the waning days of the production code. Part of this obscurity is certainly due to the film’s overall failings—you have to be in a good mood to be particularly enthusiastic about it, considering that the plot barley makes sense, that plenty of comic opportunities are left untouched, that the film can be grating at times, and that its sense of comedy has not aged well in most matters. You would not recommend it as an introduction, or even a solid second-place choice at anything it stands for. This being said… if your expectations are already well-calibrated, if you’ve seen the better sex comedies of the 1960s, if you’re a fan of the actors involved and if you’re looking for a tiny but wholesome bit of social progress, then Honeymoon Hotel may be worth the sit. As far as I’m concerned, the film’s biggest assets are its lead trio of actors—Robert Goulet (yes, that Robert Goulet, except without the moustache) as a James Gartner-type playboy, Robert Morse as a jilted groom trying to forget his cancelled wedding, and Nancy Kwan as the object of their affections. The plot gets cracking when, in the wake of his cancelled wedding, the ex-groom finds himself, along with his playboy friend, in a hotel designed for couples. Two things to note here: We’ve got two Caucasian men vying for the affections of an Asian woman without the racial component ever being mentioned—three years before Loving v. Virginia legalized interracial unions across the United States. Then we’ve got some comedy in which our leads are mistaken for a homosexual couple and the worst thing that happens is a few raised eyebrows for comic effect. That’s… not bad at all for a film made five years before Stonewall. It goes without saying that, despite being stuck in a substandard vehicle, Goulet is cool, Morse is frantically funny and Kwan is remarkable. Some of the film’s sex farce material still works well, although all the material having to do with the native population falls flatter than the rest of the lacklustre comedy, and you have to be awfully indulgent about ludicrous plotting in order to even get into the film. Still, there are a few interesting things in Honeymoon Hotel. Not many, and not enough to warrant an effort, but enough to have a look at the film if it pops up on your listings.