How To Murder Your Wife Reviews

A great example of its time

This is the quintessential 60's light comedy, slick Hollywood at its best. Ardent feminists may get the vapours, but really it's just a product of its time, and well re-mastered too. Great performances - Lemmon in his prime, Terry-Thomas proving just how good he really was, and heaps of glamour and indeed talent from an exceptional supporting cast. Virna Lisi is the eye-candy, and a script by George Axelrod - it's a classic all round. No heavy political comment, but if you fancy a light frothy romp, you won't be disappointed.

Fantastic comedy

This has got to be one of the best "Man and his Butler" films around. Terry Thomas is superbly cast as the english Butler Charles, who looks after his masters single life to the second.

Very funny, excellent to watch.

Customer Review

Just sit back relax and enjoy this simple good old fashioned entertaining film. Cleverly constructed, beautifully played. Cant say much more than that.

[Highly rated reviewer]

How To Murder Your Wife

This was excellent. Very funny and entertaining.

How to kill two hours

First - what makes it worth watching. I loved the sheer audacity of the central premise and the way it is developed, the avoidance of a conventional romantic scenario, the interplay between the superbly cast Lemmon and Terry-Thomas, and the hedonistic, uninhibited '60s atmosphere. I also like films about cartoonists, especially where they use their own lives as an inspiration.

What I didn't care for so much - the humour often seemed naive and didn't really work for me. It was perhaps a bit too reliant on ethnic and sexual stereotyping: the wild, impulsive, hot-blooded Italian female. Also the 'battle of the sexes' theme - the women are manipulative control freaks and the men are put-upon wretches who just want a little 'me-time' - inevitably seems bit old-fashioned today.

Given its savagely cynical take on marriage and gender relations, the film's ending struck me as rather bland and I think that a darker and more ambivalent conclusion might have been in order.

Overall, though, a highly original and well-realised picture which is definitely worth watching.

[Highly rated reviewer]

A Laugh Feast

A star line-up of comedy performers make this film a frantic, hilarious laugh feast. Headed by Jack Lemmon and aided by his gentleman's gentleman Terry Thomas, his hen pecked lawyer Eddie Mayhoff and the hen who is pecking him Claire Trevor, taking time off from playing drunken tarts with hearts and his friendly physician Jack Albertson. A successful cartoonist (Lemmon) awakens after a stag party for a friend has gone pear shaped to find himself married to a gorgeous Italian girl (Virna Lisi) who came out of a cake. His cartoon character Private Eye Bash Brannigan turns from action man to overweight, out of condition hen pecked husband as does the cartoonist. The comedy centre around his attempts to get rid of his wife, even contemplating - murder!

Truly Awful!

Dire, one of the worst films ever!

I honestly had thoughts of suicide by the end of this film - It really is that bad.

I'm going to have to be more careful with 'my selection' in future.