drednm At two and a half hours, Billy Wilder's soufflé falls flatter than a crepe in this laborious comedy about a naive ex-cop and a hooker with a heart of gold.The snail-paced story dies fast as the plot plods along. Jack Lemmon is the ex-cop who ends up as a pimp to Shirley MacLaine's Irma la Douce, a Parisian prostitute. He falls in love with her and decides the only way to have her to himself is to disguise himself as a rich British lord who pays her only to play cards. To earn the money to pay her, he works nights in a meat market schlepping huge slabs of meat.Eventually he decides, with the help of the local bar owner (Lou Jacobi) he hatches a plan to "kill off" the lord and go straight. When he symbolically throws the disguise (which isn't very good) into the Seine, his rival pimp sees him and reports the murder of the lord. From there, the plot churns on for another 30 minutes to resolve the situation.Comedy needs quick pacing; farce needs even sharper pacing. If it lumbers along as this film does, the spark simply dies out, leaving a fizzled pile of ashes.MacLaine and Lemmon try hard, but it just doesn't work. Jacobi becomes annoying, and even his final "to the audience" line is a dud. Among the co-stars are Bruce Yarnell as Ox, Herschel Bernardi as the police inspector, Joan Shawlee as the Amazon, Grace Lee Whitney as Kiki, Hope Holiday as Lolita, Cliff Osmond as the police sergeant, and Howard McNear as the concierge. Brief bits by James Caan and Bill Bixby.

John Brooks Jack Lemon. What a natural. What an actor. Shirley MacLaine also very good. This film with all its convoluted twists and turns and knots and what not, has a beautiful love story at the center of it. It appears to be incredibly sweet, and touching, all the while supplying good comic relief, in particular with that bartender character and his insane anecdotes where he's been in every corner of the world and back, very good stuff - and the film does really well at developing lots of content in a plot that is fairly simple...but - and there's a big but (and I cannot lie) - it lingers for too long to a point where the viewer is ready to indulge and buy into the film's surrealistic plot for a while... but then it exaggerates just too much and a growing sense of silliness starts spilling out of it. In that, it's also too long: nearly two hours and thirty minutes, for such a cute, light story there's no reason whatsoever for that length.Could've been better as a shorter, more focused, less leaky story.Good stuff still. 7/10.

SnoopyStyle Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon) is a by-the-book cop. He used to police a children's park. After rescuing a child, he's transferred to the prostitute-filled Paris streets. He is taken with Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine) but is shocked to realize she's a prostitute. He calls in a raid on Hotel Casanova. It pulls in the wrong man and he is kicked off the force. He finds solace with Moustache (Lou Jacobi) who owns Chez Moustache. He wins in a fight against Irma's crude boyfriend Hippolyte. She takes him as her new boyfriend/pimp but he has a crazy plan to monopolize her time as new client British Lord X. He wears himself out earning enough money to pay her and keep up the pretense.The trio of Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon, and Shirley MacLaine delivers a fun loopy love story. MacLaine is a real wildcat. Lemmon has the humanity and the madcap insanity. Two and a half hours is a long running time for a comedy. The second half feels a little long. I would have preferred Wilder figure a way to end this sooner.

Robert J. Maxwell Billy Wilder had an effective way of insinuating pathos into a comedy. It's always a temptation, I suppose, for writers and directors to do something "serious." Comedies are supposed to be all froth and no substance, while drama is to be paid attention to and applauded. But it's hard to blend the two. Woody Allan did it once or twice, as in "Annie Hall." Shakespeare's "dark comedies" weren't as successful as either his comedies or his tragedies -- that's in my opinion anyway, and I happen to be the world's leading expert on Walter Shakespeare.In Wilder's case he made some straight dramas ("Double Indemnity") and some exceptional straight comedies ("Some Like It Hot"). After 1960 he began to produce comedies with touches of sadness and they more or less worked. "The Apartment" was an example of this trend and so is "Irma La Douce." Jack Lemon is the ex cop who inadvertently becomes the pimp of Shirley MacLaine, the eponymous Irma, in Paris. They fall in love of course. She insists on supporting him in the finest fashion but he grows jealous because, after all, every passerby is banging the woman he loves. MacLaine, possessed of greater savoir-faire, is puzzled by Lemon's discomfort.So Lemon borrows 500 francs from his friend Mustache, dresses up as an English nobleman, and in this disguise arranges to meet his girl twice a week and pay her enough money, just for playing solitaire, that she can dispense with all her other clients. Lemon, dumb as an ox, beams with pride as he pulls this stunt off, until Mustache reminds him that although money is now changing hands, none will be coming in. He borrows from Mustache, the phony Englishman gives it to MacLaine, she gives it to Lemon, and Lemon gives it back to Mustache. So in order to keep this system an open one, Lemon begins to sneak out of the flat and work all night in the market, an unsustainable effort. Then it gets complicated. Lemon is arrested for his own murder.It all comes together and works, in a stage-bound and slightly old-fashioned way, rather like Wilder's later "The Front Page." The performances are very good indeed. MacLaine is matter-of-fact about her profession, very pretty, and sexy too, pale and slender. Lou Jacobi is Mustache and does fine with the role of the grandiose friend who teaches Lemon how to be "British." But Lemon is superb as the nervous and exhausted lover. Andre Previn's score is lively or wistful, as the circumstances demand, though it may depend on Borodin.It's pretty funny and you'll probably enjoy it.