(1954)
2.5
Craig Butler
The strangely titled Phffft! re-teamed Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon, whose chemistry had worked so well earlier in the year in It Should Happen to You. The chemistry is still there, but Holliday and Lemmon have to work much harder to make the indifferently paced and intermittently humorous Phffft! pay off. Although director Mark Robson makes good use of New York location shots (though not with the same quiet flair that George Cukor did in It Should Happen), he never seems to get a real handle on the script. George Axelrod has also done much better work elsewhere -- there's a semi-smutty undertone to much of the proceedings, not an uncommon occurrence in an Axelrod script, but here not leavened with enough wit or surprise to make it palatable. As always, Holliday is worth watching, with her ability to be screamingly funny and deeply touching at the same time, and Lemmon, though a bit forced, knows how to play off of her and still score his own points; their dance scene is a particular highlight. Jack Carson is annoying, but Kim Novak is actually pretty amusing. Lemmon and Novak would each go on to breakthrough performances the next year in, respectively, Mister Roberts and Picnic.
cast-crew for Phffft! on AllMovie
Phffft! (1954)
