Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

SimonJack One who watches this movie simply for the comedy would be hard-pressed to rate it more than six stars. Viewing it only as a story about a family may earn it six or seven stars. Then there's a story about career and family conflict, about love, and what's most important. And, how about a standard theme of a man who works late or away from home and is enticed toward infidelity? What about the drama of a major change in one's profession and how it affects a person and one's spouse? Then there is the move from the city to the country, and associated major changes in lifestyle.A number of reviews have doted on that last point, seeing this film as a leftover from other films such as "George Washington Slept Here" of 1942, or "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House" of 1948. But the whole plot of those films revolves around the move from the city to the country and renovating a condemned property. If that's all I saw in this film, I would rate it no better than 4 or 5 stars. Because it doesn't have the humor of those two true comedies.But, "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" is much more than a simple plot film. It's really four or five or more plots neatly interwoven. 1st plot – Laurence Mackay (played by David Niven) moves from teaching theater at a major college (Columbia University?), to writing a book and becoming the latest Broadway critic for a major New York newspaper. 2nd plot – His loving and devoted wife Kate (played by Doris Day) manages four young boys in their Manhattan apartment with the help of a maid. She rushes to join her husband for the opening of a musical play being staged by a long-time friend and godfather to their children – Alfred North (played by Richard Haydn). Laurence struggles over his review with Kate. Finally, he has to tell the truth. He pans the play.3rd plot – North is furious about the review and vows to get even; and the star of the play, Deborah Vaughn (played by Janis Paige) joins his vendetta to get even with Laurence. 4th plot – The family moves from the city to the country, with all that entails – and it's a lot. 5th plot – Kate sees changes in Laurence as he has his new position of power. He's now more self-righteous and self-centered. He's unkind, even mean. He doesn't see it at first, naturally. More subplots fit in here – the community is going to put on a play and Kate is part of it. Deborah makes a play for Laurence, and although he is in unconformable situations with her, he remains faithful to Kate.Now, if one watches this movie from this standpoint, it is much more interesting and enjoyable. It's a movie about a major job change for the main breadwinner. It's a movie about a change in personality. It's a film about a feud with one's closest friend. It's a film about moving from the city to the country and upending of lifestyle. It's a film about raising four small boys and all that goes with that. It's about a couple who are madly in love with one another and who struggle with all of these things. And with this, there are sprinklings of humor here and there. Now it's a different movie, much more interesting, and even fun in places.Now it earns 7 to 8 stars – and I go for the 8 for two reasons. First, it has a fine cast all of whom give very good performances. Second, it's based on a best-selling 1957 book of essays by Jean Kerr with the same title. It's autobiographical, and the people and situations were real. Kerr was an author, playwright and songwriter. She wrote two books, several plays and stage scores and scripts for several musicals. Her husband was Walter Kerr, a writer, lyricist and director of several plays. So, his character in real life succeeded on the stage where Niven's character in the movie doesn't succeed. And, in real life, Walter Kerr was theater critic for the New York Herald Tribune from 1951-1966, and for The New York Times from 1966-1983.To top it all off, the couple collaborated on several musicals and they won two Tony awards for "Golidlocks" in 1958. In 1978, Walter won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. The couple was married for 56 years and they had six children. Walter died in 1996 at age 83, and Jean died in 2003 at age 80. References about the couple state that Laurence Mackay in this movie is based on Walter Kerr. All of this would seem to lend credence to this film as being based on real people and events, with many interwoven plots.And, here's a closing punch that some may find interesting. It's a true example of how Walter Kerr could be a harsh critic if the play was bad in his eyes. It's from early in his career as a critic. The original musical of "Candide" opened on Broadway Dec. 1, 1956. It was directed by Tyrone Guthrie. In his New York Herald Tribune critique of the musical on Dec. 3, 1956, Kerr wrote, "Three of the most talented people our theater possesses – Lillian Hellman, Leonard Bernstein, Tyrone Guthrie – have joined hands to transform Voltaire's Candide into a really spectacular disaster. Who is mostly responsible for the great ghostly wreck that sails like a Flying Dutchman across the fogbound stage of the Martin Beck? That would be hard to say, the honors are so evenly distributed." The musical was a box office disaster. It had just 73 performances and closed after two months.

sol- Being an honest theatre critic proves unexpectedly challenging for a college professor and his wife in this oddly titled comedy starring David Niven and Doris Day. The film is essentially two tales in one. It is partially about the theatre critic job getting to Niven's head and partially about the impact on Day who has to raise their four bratty children on their own (as he is so busy), something that eventually leads them to moving out of the city to the countryside where they experience new house woes. For a film so clearly structured as two overlapping tales, 'Please Don't Eat the Dasies' works surprisingly well. As an avid film-goer, it is easy to sympathise with Niven's desire to only give credit where credit is due when writing reviews, and as with Bob Hope's subsequent 'Critic's Choice', the film taps into the difficulty of resisting wittiness over descriptions when writing reviews. Day's dilemmas are not quite as interesting (and the film very awkwardly squeezes in no less than three songs for her to sing) but she is solid in her own right, noticeably suffocated under the weight of her children. On the downside, her kids are too obnoxious to ever be cute or really funny, but one might argue this as intentional. It is certainly at least hard to think of another mainstream movie that has managed to get away with playing up the locking up of a kid in a cage for laughs (!). Of course, the film's most unique aspect is its title, modeled on the contrary nature of the couple's kids who think nothing of eating all their daisies because they have never been told not to!

writers_reign At the back of my mind there lurks an idea that Jean Kerr was a pretty good writer and a dab hand with the one-liners. I recall a play she wrote, Mary, Mary, and a musical, Goldilocks for which she wrote Book and Lyrics in collaboration with her husband Walter, the noted New York Drama Critic, who appears here lightly disguised as David Niven which, of course, makes Doris Day an incarnation of Jean Kerr herself. Isobel Lennart is also no slouch at cobbling a screenplay together yet somehow both writers just miss - at least for me. Not a lot wrong with Day or Niven and they're about 90 per cent believable as a married couple, Janis Paige could phone in the 'other woman' by that stage in her career and if Spring Byington can't play Spring Byington by now she never will. I watched till the end and that's about all I can say for it.

Neil Doyle It took four sessions in front of the DVD player to get through watching PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES, about as bland a domestic comedy as I've ever watched. I'm a big Doris Day fan but this was the point in her career when she started making some family films that just didn't hit the mark.The cast is certainly pleasant enough, but the theme of boys being boys is overdone after the first twenty minutes. David Niven has the patience of a saint to put up with the nonsense forced on him here. Neither he nor Doris are able to overcome the inadequacies of an uninspired script that turns out to be a hodge-podge of ideas left over from GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE (about a house in the country) and MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE, self-explanatory.To her credit, Day performs with natural ease throughout and even manages to toss off the vapid title song without losing her dignity. Best in support are Janis Paige as a sexy temptress who tries to lure Niven into her clutches and Richard Haydn who seems to be preparing for his subsequent role in THE SOUND OF MUSIC as a theatrical man who knows his way around a script.None of it is very funny, even with Patsy Kelly as a housemaid. The fluffy dog, Hobo, has a genuinely funny scene or two and there's the youngest child kept in a cage who steals a couple of scenes without even trying. But all in all, this one taxes the patience of anyone who develops a bad case of deja vu, having seen it all before.Summing up: Has the flavor of a TV situation comedy that goes on long beyond the half-hour mark. Banal best describes the weak script. The Jean Kerr book must have been mildly amusing.