A Kitten for King Leer

Good Neighbor Sam. "We're good clean family men here at Nurdlinger Farms," declares Milk Merchant Edward G. Robinson. "I don't want my account handled by bawds and lechers and libertines." Enter Jack Lemmon, a neat, courteous, helpful young adman who resides in suburban San Francisco with two children, one dreadfully adorable duck, and his leggy All-American wife (Dorothy Provine). Everyone who has ever seen a Jack Lemmon movie will instantly surmise that the model account exec is a three-button bacchant, and so he is. The girl next door (Romy Schneider) cannot collect a $15 million inheritance unless she collects a hus band, fast. And who is the lucky fellow who has to commute across back lawns, masquerading as his good neighbor's spouse? Mmm-hmmm.

Sam's most satisfying gag is the filming of a TV commercial--a hilarious sequence in which the Hertz man is catapulted out of limbo and lands everywhere but in the driver's seat. The person who does land with solid comic authority in this otherwise tiresome and familiar romp is Actress Schneider, the gemutlich Viennese sex kitten who has purred beguilingly through more pretentious trifles, such as The Victors, The Cardinal and Boccaccio '70. But Lemmon, though adroit as always, is now well along toward proving that the most gifted of farceurs cannot build a really distinguished career simply by explaining, in film after film, why he happens to have on pajamas.

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