I think even die-hard Lucy fans, if pressed, would have to admit that there was something missing here in both the story line and the comedy elements. The Lucy/Ricky charisma of the TV show just wasn't there, and in retrospect, it's a bit sad to realize that the trouble in the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz marriage was being recreated in the dialog between their characters in this film. You wouldn't have known it at the time of course because these things were kept hush-hush for the sake of the TV show; I didn't know it back then because I was just a kid watching and enjoying "I Love Lucy". Oh well, one grows up to have those illusions shattered.At least they look good together on screen, especially in the Technicolor format, even if they're fighting with each other most of the time. James Mason steps in as the ostensible guardian angel to try and help things along in the troubled marriage, but even he's absent once things get rolling during the camping trip. The 'Shadows of Africa' movie interlude had me going for a while, thinking it was a real movie credit for Mason until Ms. Ball showed up as the replacement Jungle Lady for the uncredited Marilyn Maxwell. That was probably the cleverest device the picture offered.Back to that camping trip, I couldn't help thinking that the film makers borrowed a page from the Western genre when Ricky, er, Lorenzo Vega serenaded Susan (that would be Lucy) by the campfire with the title song. That was the highlight of the picture for my money, better than the tent gimmick or Susan's sleeping bag hip-hop that might have been better served with a laugh track, but otherwise just ho-hum within the story itself. For TV and movie fans, the other nice diversions were the characters of Nancy Kulp as the Vega's easily irritated housemaid, and Natalie Schafer in a decade prior warm-up for the role of wealthy Mrs. Thurston Howell on 'Gilligan's Island'. All said and done though, you're better entertained watching any single episode of "I Love Lucy".

This is not a total failure, as the three principles do mingle well, and they do try. Mason, the most dramatically successful of the three actors, actually could play comedy on occasion (think of him as the "chubby chasing" old goat in GEORGY GIRL) but his best work was in drama. In fact two years before this film his best remembered performance (as Norman Main in A STAR IS BORN) ended with that classic drowning suicide. Hardly a chuckle in that - though to be fair the complete film was to spoof some swashbucklers that Main was making).Susan and Lorenzo Vega are an up-scale married couple (he is a chemist working on an insecticide) who have been married five years, but who seem to be drifting apart. The near explosion occurs when they are having dinner with two of Susan's friends (Nathalie Schaefer and Ralph Dunke) who are a wee bit too snobby and complacent for Lorenzo to really enjoy the company of. And since he is preoccupied with the deadline of testing his new powerful insecticide, he is not in the mood for their nonsense. He explodes at the dinner, causing them to leave in anger. Susan is also angry as they are her friends. So Lorenzo and she have a spat, and he does not sleep that night.Enter Darling, the Guardian Angel of Susan. This is Mason. At first Susan is amazed that he resembles James Mason, but it soon develops that his features are not really like Mason's but she sees Mason because the actor is her favorite actor. He is trying to convince her that she has to work harder to save her marriage with Lorenzo. Susan has to try to be more supportive of her husband.The complications that develop somewhat resemble another film of a few years earlier: THE BISHOP'S WIFE. There the angel (Cary Grant) falls for the wife (Loretta Young) of the Bishop (David Niven) he is trying to correct the religious motivations of. Grant spends far too much time "entertaining" Young, until Niven becomes jealous - hardly the intention of the angel's boss. Here Darling is not pursuing his charge. Instead he is fighting her off for awhile because of the way she sees him. There is a cute moment when Lucy is watching a film starring Mason and sees herself replacing the heroine. The interesting thing is that the film is reminiscent of Mason's original acting fame as one of those men (like George Sanders and Eric Von Stroheim) you love to hate - the star who whipped the villainess to death in THE MAN IN GRAY, or the nasty uncle of the piano protégée in THE SEVENTH VEIL. He is a sheik who is mistreating a female prisoner (who of course is falling for him while he does so). As a spoof on Mason's background it is mildly good.Eventually he manages to get Susan back on track, leading to her going on the trek to Yosemite Park to test the new insecticide - to help her husband. And of course, being Lucille Ball, her attempts just drive Desi up the wall. It is a tolerable if unmemorable comedy. That is the best I can say for it. But it has some moments worth waiting for. And with it, we leave the last of the three Lucy-Desi films. A curious bunch. Their best work is still the television series.

Or "I Love Lucy, Episode Two: 'Forever Darling." This could very well be a first in more ways than one: two actors who had slogged through B-movies in unremarkable parts had by now become larger-than-life television stars due to their show, bought RKO Studios, converted it into Desilu, were beginning to produce other shows (who would go on to successes of their own), and to top it off, had broken the myth that television actors could not make the transition into the big screen. THE LONG, LONG TRAILER was proof of that and only bolstered "I Love Lucy" to greater heights. FOREVER DARLING was a way of cementing their TV personas in another feature film in which the same antics that had been the basis of every "Lucy" episode would be seen in a 90-minute movie while incorporating an element of Surrealist fantasy where James Mason makes his appearance as an Angel who intervenes in key moments throughout the film. It's an enjoyable little movie that doesn't try to pretend to be bigger than it is; lightning does not always strike twice, although here it just fails to hit its target dead-center because it essentially recycles much of the "I Love Lucy" stories. It is enjoyable, though.

Lucy and Desi return in a film about what happens when the love starts to leave the marriage of their characters, Susan and Lorenzo. It's not a wacky comedy like The Long, Long Trailer or I Love Lucy, but it's more sweetly poignant and gently humorous. I especially like the scene where Susan and Lorenzo are at a movie and he falls asleep, and she screams and wakes him up right away! The startled, confused look on Desi's face is priceless! And for 60s TV buffs, Nancy Kulp (Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies) and Natalie Schafer (Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island) are both in this film. Definitely worth renting.