Please Don’t Eat the Daisies

Directed by Charles Walters, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies follows David Niven’s Laurence and Doris Day’s Kate as they attempt to balance their busy home lives with his new job as a theater critic. Filmmaker Walters, armed with a script by Isobel Lennart, delivers a sluggish endeavor that’s rarely as charming (or even entertaining) as one might’ve anticipated, and there’s little doubt that the movie’s arms-length atmosphere is compounded by hopelessly hit-and-miss episodic structure – with the ongoing emphasis on tiresome, uninvolving subplots compounding the decidedly less-than-enthralling atmosphere. (It’s hard, for example, to muster up much enthusiasm for the tedious plot thread involving Laurence and his continuing encounters with a would-be starlet.) And while both Day and Niven are as affable as one might’ve anticipated, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, which admittedly does improve in its comparatively compelling third act, relegates them to a padded-out and mostly uninvolving misfire that feels like it should be so much better (and shorter).

** out of ****