Nora Ephron’s letters from college inspired her parents to write a hit Broadway play, no doubt appealing to it’s middle class Jewish audiences with its theme of “aw gee kids are funny when they go off to college, thinking of sex and wacky political causes”. James Stewart is very WASPY but he’s written in a way familiar from the New York Jewish comedies of the time, fretting over his daughter’s sex life (which feels awkward). The role of the wife is minimised – she’s hardly in the film at all – but the daughter is prominent (Sandra Dee).
Dee looks very sexy here – tousled hair, swimsuits, beatnik outfits, even garters in a French can can fantasty sequence. Guys are constantly pawing her, even her arts lecturer. She’s a lot of fun – I really loved her singing folk songs on a guitar – it’s one of her best performances.
It’s an episodic tale – Dee gets up to adventures, dad goes to investigate, chaos resumes. There are some laughs but much of it is repetitive (another protest, dad gets arrested, dad tries to escape), and the film overstays it’s welcome despite Robert Morley in the support cast. The last third takes place in France, apparently because Daryl Zanuck was a Francophile (the film was the first made by 20th Century Fox after it had been closed down in the wake of the Cleopatra debacle.)
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