Saturday, February 11, 2012

Movie review - "Simon and Laura" (1955) **

Years before the reality TV craze there was this satire of TV with Peter Finch and Kay Kendall as a real life married couple of the theatre (who are said to rank below the Oliviers and the Attenboroughs - I put them on the level of Michael Denison and Dulcie Grey), whose career is in a slump and marriage is on the rocks, who are hired to play a married couple on TV. Their servants are hired to play themselves (yes, even though they haven't got much money they still have enough for servants) and romantic complications come from Ian Carmichael (as the producer, who sets his cap at Kendall) and Muriel Pavlov (the screenwriter who becomes entwined with Finch, even though she loves Carmichael).

The basic story isn't bad - complications include the addition of a child - but it's very badly handled and executed. Finch is very bad - even his biographer Elaine Dundy calls his performance "interestingly bad". He could play comedy, as his stint in Dad and Dave Come to Town showed, but he's completely out of his element here in a part that needed Kenneth More. 
 
Kendall isn't that great either in a role which should have suited her. Over the top playing and mugging, and a lack of reality about a situation which isn't that far from reality.

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