Marilyn fails to steal the movie but she is very close (too small role in one of those 5 episodes). All the other actors are excellent and all the stories are exciting, true, like in real life and the the whole movie is a real moral lesson. A true delight in seeing so many precious stars, some of them smaller some of them bigger, such as Ginger Rogers, Mitzi Gaynor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Louis Calhern, Jane Darwell, Victor Moore, etc. They all have real charm, they are very talented, they are natural, credible. Very entertaining!

This is a potentially interesting topic, with an all-star cast, largely wasted in a screenplay that's too dispersed, with too little humor. I regard this film as essentially an anthology of little dramas, some with a measure of comedic content. I suspect probably 3 couples rather than 5, would be optimal in the time given.Reviewer dejimd points out that lack of a legal marriage license doesn't necessarily mean that, legally, a couple is not considered married. Thus, the apparently difficult position of Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor in regard to her pregnancy is not as serious as they had feared. On the other hand, gold-digging Zsa Zsa need not have fainted when she received the notice that her marriage certificate was invalid because the justice of peace that married them was new and not legally able to perform marriage ceremonies for another week. It's perhaps surprising that the bickering couple played by Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers decide to undergo a legally valid marriage ceremony. My guess is that they made sure they were legally married because their jobs at the radio station depended on their being married to each other.The Paul Douglas and Eva Arden couple seemed bored with each other, with no baby to provide a common interest. I wouldn't be surprised if they had rejected a shoring up of the legality of their marriage. I suspect they may have bowed to inertia, in hopes their relationship would eventually get better. The David Wayne & Marylyn Monroe pair look to have a short-term economic strategy, with David serving as the stay-at-home babysitter, while she is traveling around competing in beauty contests. I correctly guessed that they would renew their marriage ceremony.Of course, we wouldn't expect Louis Calhern to agree to make his marriage with gold-digging Zsa Zsa look any more valid.In conclusion, being as how the premise that the common problem of these 5 couples is that they are not legally married is suspect, and the supposed humor is minimal, I can't recommend this film, unless you have a star actor you want to see.

When Justice of the Peace Victor Moore learns that he jumped the gun in marrying traveling elopers passing through his state it causes great consternation in the lives of five random couples across the USA who discover that We're Not Married. In discussing the matter with the wife played by Jane Darwell he actually comes out with the clever notion that if these folks made a mistake they're getting a second chance at marriage without going through the pangs of divorce.We're Not Married chronicles the lives of these five couples when they learn of the rush to marry mistake caused by Moore when he married them before his commission took effect. Usually the story that gets the most critical acclaim is the one involving Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers who play a nationally broadcast happily married radio couple. That's for public consumption actually these two bicker about everything. Screenwiter Nunnally Johnson was at his satiric best when he spoofed such radio personalities as Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenberg who did just that kind of broadcast perpetually hawking their sponsor's products.The others are pretty good too. David Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have an unusual arrangement where she goes out and wins beauty contests and he stays home taking care of the kid. The non-marriage throws them for a while as she as just won the Mrs. Mississippi contest, but they make lemonade out of the lemon.Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor have a more serious problem, he's a soldier with orders for Korea, she's in a family way. It takes quite a lot to get that situation resolved and not an entirely happy ending for Bracken.The weakest episode by far is Paul Douglas and Eve Arden. I was surprised that Arden who usually gets some of the best lines in her films is strangely muted by the script. They play a couple who has settled into boredom and the episode was the most boring of the bunch.But my favorite is Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor. He's an oil millionaire with a gold digging wife who has a bottom feeding lawyer in Paul Stewart. What happens to Zsa Zsa and Stewart is classic.The idea of a marriage suddenly not being legal was tried out in one of Alfred Hitchcock's few comedies Mr.&Mrs. Smith with Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard being the suddenly unmarried couple. We're Not Married increases the idea by a factor of five. I wouldn't say this film is five times better than Hitchcock's, but it's still very good and done by people more at home in the genre.

It's a clever premise, but the results have dated rather badly. Unfortunately, the comedy level never reaches the sparkle it needs, though the opening vignette (Rogers and Allen) comes close. Perhaps that's not surprising given Director Goulding's credits, which suggest he's more at home with Bette Davis melodrama than with material of this sort. Also, I'm surprised a big-budget studio like Fox didn't film this in Technicolor, which would have added a lot to the atmospherics. Instead, we get dour gray tones that undercut the light-hearted mood, making the movie look older than it is. But then, 1952 was a year Hollywood was looking to retool in the face of TV's onslaught. The following year would see an explosion of wide- screen color beyond the reach of the livingroom tube. As a result, this comedy venture may have been caught in the transition.To me, the Allen-Rogers sequence is the best. It's actually a rather scathing look at entertainment make-believe and the relentless assault of commercial advertising. In private life the two are barely speaking, while on radio they play a pair of happy marrieds who trade comic barbs in between pushing the sponsors' goofy products. It's rather deftly and bitingly done, even though the 57-year old Allen looks like he's been on a two-week bender. In passing—note that even though we see a number of living rooms, no TV's are in sight, only radios! This was Hollywood in its final stage of denial.The other vignettes are mildly entertaining, with a look at a number of performers on the way up the ladder-- Monroe, Marvin, Wayne, Gaynor. Especially satisfying is the delicious opportunity the letter provides Calhern to turn the tables on the gold-digging Gabor and her grasping attorney. At least the screenplay had the good sense not to reconcile these two at the end. But notice how the script insists the others be reconciled in typical 50's happy ending style. This certainly rings hollow in the case of the feuding Allen-Rogers. Given a second chance, it's hard to see how they could possibly stay together. In the case of Douglas-Arden, the most incisive of the vignettes, they may be totally bored with one another (check the dinner scene), but are too complaisant to actually change. That strikes me as maybe not the funniest, but at least as the most realistic of the episodes.Anyway, whatever the comedy lacks in sparkle, it is revealing of its time—radio, beauty pageants, war in Korea (implied in Bracken's troop ship). But I'm afraid that the clever premise plays better than the mild results.