There’s a Girl in My Soup (1970)

(On Cable TV, August 2020) It’s tough to resist a film titled There’s a Girl in My Soup, although seeing Peter Sellers play the aging playboy is certainly enough to cool any enthusiasm. I’ve had a hard time liking Sellers’ work even since reading his biography, and having him in a somewhat repellent role can be a tough sell. At least there’s Goldie Hawn (in one of her earliest screen appearances) to keep his character in check. As would befit a film from the early New Hollywood era, There’s a Girl in My Soup doesn’t end well – although it’s not exactly a downer either. Along the way, we get two capable actors batting good dialogue back and forth (as you can reasonably expect from a theatrical source), perhaps the highlight being a lengthy dialogue sequence as he takes her back to his place and she deconstructs his seduction techniques. The third act of the film doesn’t have anywhere as rich to go, and There’s a Girl in My Soup deflates as it makes its way to its inevitable ending. Still, Sellers does manage to create a complete character by the end of it, keeping his personality shifts to a minimum along the way. Fittingly enough for him, the ending is a perverse celebration of narcissism as a solution to heartbreak.