You know you've found a terrible movie where the best actor is a chimp!! Sadly, the chimp is only a bit player! Yes, "How to Commit Marriage" is an incredibly unfunny and offensive pile of bile from the hip, wacky 1960s. Jackie Gleason and Bob Hope is an odd combination but with this much talent, you'd assume the film would be funny. Well, you'd assume wrong!When the film begins, Bob Hope and Jane Wyman are a couple who decide, out of the blue, to get divorced. Soon, their daughter arrives and announces she wants to marry a nice guy. Because of this, the parents decide NOT to tell her about the pending divorce. As for his father (Jackie Gleason), he is a crass jerk who believes in two things...money and himself. He is a completely amoral jerk who tries to convince the couple to just live together. They agree...and when she gets pregnant, he then convinces them to give up the baby because 'babies are a drag'...and they do! Her parents, though divorced, swoop in to take their grandchild. There's more...but by this point the film REALLY lost my interest.The bottom line is that instead of making the film funny, THE joke is that the parents all decide to become hip....hip and VERY selfish. While I am NOT an old fashioned guy, the film seems to be a great endorsement of family and traditional values...mostly because everyone in this film is so hateful and nasty...especially Gleason's character. Perhaps a reworking of this MIGHT have worked, but with one actor well into his 60s and the other two in their 50s, it all comes off as amazingly contrived and ridiculous (you just have to see Hope in his Nehru jacket!). The script, actors and filmmakers all try way too hard to be clever and with it...but completely forgot to be funny. It's among the very worst films Gleason, Hope and Wyman have made...perhaps THE worst.

I am not sure how I ended up witnessing this movie, most of it wasn't memorable, some drivel about Bob Hope wanting to get a divorce from Jane Wyman while at the same time imparting a conservative family-values mindset on his son (or was it his daughter?) who was betrothed to Jackie Gleason's daughter (or was it his son?). There's some sort of nonsense about a traveling psychedelic swami show coming to town and Hope impersonating the swami to try and lecture his young son on the importance of a proper marriage ... odd movie.The centerpiece of the film is howlingly funny, however, as Jackie Gleason suckers Bob Hope into playing a game of golf against Mildred the Chimp for a wager. It's a sucker bet too, and Gleason doesn't even have to rig the game: Gladys humiliates Hope with a display of golf prowess that would have made Jack Nicklaus blush. For some reason I found it hyperventilatingly funny, having trouble breathing as Hope & Gleason decked out in polyester golf outfits find themselves upstaged by a monkey. Only in America.

Recently watched this film twice over three days. It grew on me. Gleason gives a hilarious performance worthy of an Oscar nomination as Oliver Poe. Poe is a cutting-edge record industry producer who takes no bullshit and comically wrecks the establishment mindset of his almost in-laws (Hope & Wyman). Poe is finally brought back to Earth in the end by his loving and patient mistress (Louise) who delivers one of the best lines (para-phrasing) "I told Oliver if he doesn't give in this Queen isn't sleeping in his King." It's a funny movie w/ plenty of good performances (Arthur, Corey, & Matheson) and in a much undeveloped brief cameo Nielson (a decade before Airplane, Police Squad). Another undeveloped role is that of the Benson's young daughter (Cameron) and the script should have focused more on her relationship with the father of her child and how her pregnancy wasn't communicated to her parents (Hope & Wyman). Instead it uses them as plot devices so her parents adopt their grandchild… just watch it yourself. This movie is harmless fluff and it is fun to watch Gleason & Hope insult each other.

Wow, when you see how Hollywood portrays the social revolution in the sixties, you can see why people had to rebell!!! The writing is definitely in the tone of the grown-ups making fun of the band names during the sixties.It was surprising to see Tim Matheson in this movie. Also Tina Louise of Gilligan's Island fame. Leslie Nielsen is another one who is still popular.But who is that sensitive sixties band with the dreamy sound and the groovy philosophy? They're called "The Comfortable Chair" in the movie, but embarrassing as it is to admit, they sound like a real band from the time. Someone like "Small Faces", or whatever their name was.