I have seen a bunch of Bob Hope films, though few from the later part of his movie career. This is because all the Hope films from the 60s that I have seen (especially "Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number") have been disappointments. Despite this, I decided to try "The Facts of Life"...and was very much surprised. The big surprise is that the film really wasn't a comedy!!Larry (Hope) and Kitty (Lucille Ball) both hang in the same social circle but are hardly friends. She thinks he's a bit of a blowhard. Despite this, neither one realizes that they DO have something in common...inattentive spouses who take them for granted. This becomes obvious when these couples are headed to Mexico for a grand vacation. This is because Kitty and Larry's spouses both have something seemingly better to do and instruct their partners to go without them. In essence Larry and Kitty are pushed together and nature takes its course...and they slowly find themselves falling in love. Well, this made for a lovely vacation for the two but they both realize that it just cannot be and plan on returning home to their old dull lives. The problem is that when they return home, their spouses continue to find lots of things which are more important than nurturing them. So, the pair decide to pick up where they left off...though complications naturally ensue.If this doesn't sound like a comedy, well, it really isn't...at least the first half of the film. There are a few mildly funny bits here and there but it's obvious these folks weren't trying to make a comedy but more a romantic drama about marriage and straying spouses. However, when the pair finally get off together once again, the romance becomes far less romantic and the emphasis is on laughs AND reality...the reality that it was just a vacation infatuation after all and an affair ain't so easy after all.In many ways, this film would be great for couples to watch...particularly folks who have been together for many years. It's a great object lesson about what NOT to do in your marriage as well as to encourage you to keep that love alive.

Maybe it was because I was expecting the cowardly Bob Hope and the scatterbrained Lucy Ricardo, but somehow I couldn't get into The Facts of Life. It had nowhere near the quality comedy that characterized Fancy Pants and Sorrowful Jones.Bob and Lucille play a couple of 40 something marrieds, a bit of a stretch for Bob to be sure, but nothing that other Hollywood leading men weren't also doing. Problem is they're not married to each other. Their respective mates are Ruth Hussey and Don DeFore. Both couples are part of a set of California neighbors who apparently do everything together, not unlike the gangster couples in Goodfellas. Not that the men are involved in anything that illegal and risky.Anyway DeFore due to business reasons is delayed on their planned trip to Acapulco and Hussey gets sick while down there. Bob and Lucille get thrown together and one thing leads to another.But the fates do conspire against them, they just can't seem to close the deal on the affair. I think you got the rest of the story.There were a whole lot of opportunities for the type of comedy both Bob and Lucille do that creators Melvin Frank and Norman Panama just passed by. Yet both of them got good reviews generally and to be sure their performances were restrained. Maybe too restrained.As the title song of that other Facts of Life creation says, it takes a lot to get them right, and this film didn't.

Two very big names and a complete bore! Lucy and Bob were both lifeless in this "romantic comedy." A better script with funnier situations would have made this a real winner.I only remember a couple of kisses from these two, some "affair." With a better script, I'd like to have seen Doris Day and Tony Curtis in this film with a different title. Those two stars never made a picture together. I think that Doris and Tony could have brought the energy that this film lacked. Plus, it should have been done in color.Lucy looked marvelous here. It's hard to believe that she changed so much between this (1960) and "Mame" (1970). At times, Miss Ball look just like Lucy Ricardo!

Unmerry marital mix-up amongst the country club set: bored society wife Lucille Ball finds herself inexplicably drawn to neighbor Bob Hope despite the fact they've been married to others for years. Melvin Frank comedy that doesn't so much expose the funny desperation of the Marital Blahs as it does tweeze it relentlessly (Frank is not the gentle sort of writer-director--he goes for the gut, much like Neil Simon). Ball is thoroughly up to the challenge of a sharp, brittle suburban comedy, but Frank has given old pal Bob Hope the same type of groaning witticisms he supplied him with back in the 1940s (Lucy: "You're a painter??" Bob: "What do you want me to do? Cut off my ear?"). Playing to the camera, referencing Francis X. Bushman and riffing on his own stand-up routine, Hope is the wrong actor for a sophisticated comedy about infidelity. Too bad, because Lucy does very well, the black-and-white cinematography is expressive, and occasionally the writing rises above smarminess to actually reveal something substantial and amusing about marriages in a rut. ** from ****