A New Kind of Love is one of the screwball sex comedies that came out of the 1960s. They were fluffy and had strange music, scantily clad girls, and jokes about sex that were raunchy at the time because of the end of the Hays Code but today seem silly.In this one, real-life spouses Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward team up for a romantic comedy set in Paris's fashion industry. Newman plays a journalist, and Woodward plays a fashion designer. She's given almost a dual role in this movie: she plays someone whose appearance is regularly mistaken for a man, and who gets mistaken for a prostitute while she's wearing different clothes. Parts of the movie are really cute and funny, but if you're not in the mood for an Austen Powers-esque blast from the past, you'll probably think it's stupid. Just pop your corn, get in a giggly mood, and drool over the eye candy. Oh, the dresses are nice, too.

Similar in nature to the same year's "Irma La Douce" with the exception of the era in which it was set, this delightful romantic farce is a charming spoof of the fashion industry with a bit of the lady of the evening thrown in. The team of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward may not be Burton and Taylor, but their pairings on film tend to have better scripts and are less overshadowed by their personal lives. Woodward here allows herself to be de-glamorized as a rather masculine woman who specializes in knock-offs of high end fashion and goes to Paris to find new stock. After perusing such outrageous frocks as a giant feather duster and curtains for the Versaille, she takes on a lesson from guest Maurice Chevalier to seek out womanhood. A trip to Elizabeth Arden changes her image, but sitting alone in a café only brings on the wrong kind of pass.Paul Newman, who encountered the obnoxious Woodward on the plane over from New York, at first doesn't recognize her, using the name Mimi instead of the more masculine Sam. He is allowed to think of her as paid companionship, a fact she doesn't dispute. But as he becomes wise to her, he has all sorts of bizarre fantasies of how to tame her, setting her up for the inevitable confrontation.The always sunny Thelma Ritter is a delight as Woodward's love-starved assistant with Eva Gabor, George Tobias and Marvin Kaplan in fine support. The fashion industry is playfully made fun of and there is the obvious feeling that the writer had some truth to his light-hearted attack. Sinatra sings the title tune over the credits which Chevalier repeats as part of a medley.

We have another suspect in the death of the studio system, if "A New Kind of Love" is what passed for comedy in the early 1960s. Despite the star power in the cast, the spectacular wardrobes and the Parisian locations, this film was the biggest dud I've viewed in a long time. Mel Shavelson was an old-time comedy writer who wrote for some of the biggest stars, but the culture seems to have passed him by by 1963. The dialogue is painfully incoherent, trying desperately for laughs instead of logic. As others have observed here, the characters are unmoored from any motivational continuity, and the script instead relies on stereotypes and farcical slapstick. What a huge disappointment. Thank goodness Paul Newman will be remembered for his triumphs, and not for this dross.

A New Kind Of Love is another attempt by Paul Newman to do comedy. He has a part that maybe Rock Hudson could have carried off. Even playing opposite his wife doesn't do it in the chemistry department. Joanne Woodward is better at comedy than her husband.In fact for a long time you think you're watching two different films, that's how long it takes for these two to get together. Woodward is on a buying trip for her dress manufacturer George Tobias who takes her and Thelma Ritter to Paris. Woodward's a workaholic career woman who's been burned by romance and wants no more. She even dresses unattractive so much so that Paul Newman on the flight over mistakes her for a man.Now Newman's been exiled to Paris by his boss Robert F. Simon who he caught kanoodling with his wife. Well if you're going to be exiled, Paris is certainly a good place. As in all Parisian stories the boy and girl just have to get together, if not in Paris, than where in the world. George Tobias and Thelma Ritter who are usually a lot better merely walk through their parts. The best reason to see A New Kind of Love is for Maurice Chevalier's cameo as himself when he sings Mimi, Louise, and the title song which incidentally he introduced back in 1930 in The Big Pond. Eva Gabor is around to turn Tobias's head by just being Eva Gabor.Paul Newman would have to wait more than a decade for triumphant comedy in Slap Shot. He just doesn't cut it in more sophisticated material.