(1962)
2.5
Craig Butler
So many of the sex comedies of the '60s seem incredibly tame to modern audiences; Boys' Night Out would be practically quaint if it weren't for its veneer of smarminess. Boys is one of those films that wants to be "modern" (for its time) about sex but also wants to reaffirm the value of traditional marriages. The combination doesn't work here, and that -- combined with the inevitably dated feeling -- can be a problem. To overcome this obstacle, Boys needs to have real, genuine wit behind it, or at the very least it needs to be overpoweringly funny. Unfortunately, while Boys has a decent share of laughs, it still falls short of what is needed to make it anything other than average. The leading lady is also a problem -- not from the "looks" point of view, of course; Kim Novak is quite luscious here, and there's no problem believing that these men would be quite tempted by her. The problem is that Novak, for all the times she was cast as a sex symbol, rarely seemed to feel comfortable in the role. There's a coolness, a guarded quality to her that too often works against her. Here, she's playing a character where that quality could work; after all, she's supposed to be a good girl merely using these men to get material for a paper. But she still doesn't seem to really inhabit the role, playing it all from the outside looking in. Fortunately, the rest of the cast is splendid. James Garner brings far more to the role of "the decent one" than the part deserves, and Tony Randall, Howard Duff, and Howard Morris plunge into their parts like the old pros they are, getting very able assistance from Janet Blair and Anne Jeffreys, if not Patti Page.
cast-crew for Boys' Night Out on AllMovie
Boys' Night Out (1962)
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