The Thrill Of It All

Directed by Norman Jewison, The Thrill Of It All details the strife that ensues between married couple Gerald (James Garner) and Beverly (Doris Day) after the latter appears in a commercial and becomes an overnight success. It’s a decidedly dated premise that’s employed to watchable yet entirely erratic effect by Jewison, as the filmmaker, working from a script by Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner, does an effective job of wringing solid performances out of his two almost impossibly charismatic leads – with both Garner and Day, for the most part, elevating the material on an impressively ongoing basis. And although the picture gets off to an admittedly rough start, The Thrill Of It All segues into a fun, lighthearted midsection that boasts a handful of laugh-out-loud funny bits of over-the-top comedy. (There are, for example, a whole mess of wacky misunderstandings that prove awfully difficult to resist.) The movie does wear out its welcome to a slight degree in its excessively silly third act, with the emphasis on Gerald’s pointless efforts at raising Beverly’s ire certainly not nearly as compelling as Jewison has apparently intended, and yet The Thrill Of It All, though palpably overlong, ultimately can’t help but come off as an affable (if often hilariously sexist) mid-’60s comedy.

**1/2 out of ****

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