MartinHafer I am not a huge fan of Lucille Ball nor "I Love Lucy". It isn't that I dislike either...I'm just not particularly in love with them like many of their fans. However, I recently saw the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz film "The Big Trailer" recently and really enjoyed it...much more than I expected. So, when I saw TCM was airing "Forever, Darling" I thought I'd give it a chance. In hindsight...I wish I hadn't.The film has a rather strange plot. After a few years, the marriage between Susan and Lorenzo (Lucy and Desi) has grown tense...and much of it is because Susan keeps friends around her which are toxic to their marriage. After a big row, a guardian angel (James Mason) appears to her repeatedly and Susan thinks she's losing her mind. However, eventually instead of running from him, she talks to the angel and he advises her that the marriage is in deep trouble and it's up to her to make changes. So, she agrees to go with Lorenzo on a long trek into the wilderness and hilarity ensues....or at least it was supposed to ensue.The problems with the film all boil down to the writing. The basic premise is rather dumb but the bigger problem is the sit-com quality writing. For example, when Susan and Lorenzo spend their first night out camping, Susan almost instantly starts complaining...and no one is THAT annoying in real life. Within SECONDS it's one complaint after another--and the complaints are dumb ("it's stuffy in here", "it's too dark", "Larry (Lorenzo)...chase the owl away", "Larry...I'm stuck in my sleeping bag", "I cut my finger...it's bleeding", "The Coffee is cold", "I can't eat bread without butter or spread"). The timing is just awful and you wonder why her husband doesn't just leave her then and there!!Overall, I'd say this one is only for die-hard fans who will probably look past the lousy writing and lack of real comedy. Instead, I say find a copy of "The Big Trailer"...a film superior in every way.By the way, I felt a bit sad while watching this film because only a short time later, Lucy and Desi actually DID end up divorcing. A sad case of life imitating art.

bkoganbing Forever Darling was one of the attempts to make Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, arguably the hottest show business couple at the time this came out to make a jump to the big screen as a comedy team. It was mildly amusing, like a long episode of I Love Lucy.The passion's just kind of gone out of the marriage of Lucy and Desi, sadly as it was in real life. She's a socialite and he's a scientist and that was the part of the film that I had the most trouble swallowing.So after one boring evening once too often with Lucy's idiot cousin Natalie Schaefer and husband Ralph Dumke, Desi's ready to call it quits. But Lucy's guardian angel who appears in the form of her favorite movie star James Mason advises that she take more of an interest in Desi's work as a scientist. He's looking for the ultimate bug spray.Lucy's not an outdoor girl, but she goes on a camping trip with Desi and that last third of the film is just one I Love Lucy episode. The inflatable rubber raft truly gets the better of both of them.As for Mason he has an extended sequence when Lucy and Desi are watching a film that stars James Mason and Lucy in a blond wig. Mason satirizes himself rather nicely. For the rest of the film he looks somewhat uncomfortable.Fans of Lucille Ball and they sure are legion in the part of the country I reside in which is Western New York state should be pleased with Forever Darling. But three episodes of I Love Lucy will satisfy your craving better.

theowinthrop 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.

moonspinner55 Squabbling marrieds Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are given help from Lucy's guardian angel, played with self-bemusement by James Mason. The big joke in the material is that Ball's character sees the angel as a dead-ringer for Mason the Movie Star, but that's about the only laugh to be had in this leadweight scenario. Knowing what we do now about the troubled real-life relationship between Ball and Arnaz (big television stars by this point), it's only unease we get from watching them constantly bickering on screen. I doubt the film was very fresh even in 1956, mostly due to the turgid, hapless screenplay by the normally talented Helen Deutsch. Nothing on display here is diverting, with the jokes, costumes, pacing and production all sub-standard. Any mid-run episode of "I Love Lucy" runs rings around this comedic misfire. NO STARS from ****