SimonJack Rock Hudson and Doris Day made a great box office team for comedy romances. But, Rock could also do comedy quite well with other co-stars. In this case, it's Paula Prentiss. Only, the theme is reversed in this film. Rock is the pursuer of Doris in their films. Here, it's Prentiss who is pursuing Hudson. Form the very start – the title of the film, one has as inkling of the fun that is about to get underway. The name, "Man's Favorite Sport?" ends with a question mark. So, is it fishing that the cover and plot otherwise lead one to believe? Or is it something else? Again, the opening credits and song give it away. So, all the viewer has to do is sit back and enjoy this wonderful comedy romance. A lot happens at Lake Wakapoogee when sporting goods salesman and how-to fishing author, Roger Willoughby (Hudson), must join the lake's annual fishing contest. And it's all funny. The hijinks are all at Rock's expense, and he shows that he can play that end of comedy every bit as well as on the dishing out side. Prentiss is Abigail Page, public relations agent for the lake lodge. She is very good in her role with her not so subtle come on to Willoughby. Toss in a fine cast of some fishing impresarios and friends, and it's one fine funny film. This is good, clean fun for the whole family.

Dalbert Pringle From where I was sitting this "one-note-joke" definitely had a lot more going against it than it did have going for it.Yes. I do fully realize that this "boy-meets-girl" comedy was an undeniable product of the early 1960s - But, all the same, as far as an "adult" oriented farce goes, its outright sexual naivety (on top of its lame attempts at cuteness) reduced it to the calibre of being a mediocre Disney production.Containing way too many "you-got-the-wrong-idea" situations, this contrived comedy was more irritating than it was funny.Not only that, but I found that the characters were played by actors (such as Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss) who were about 10 years too old for their parts. And this made the whole story even less believable, in the long run.Besides all of the above complaints, this picture (which contained some really irksome, half-wit banter) ran on for far too long at 122 minutes.Man's Favorite Sport's story centres around Abercrombie & Fitch employee, Roger Willoughby, who (though he's apparently an "expert" on the sport of fishing) has never fished in his entire life (but nobody knows this).Through a chance meeting with Abigail Page, co-owner of the Wakapoogee Lake lodge, Roger reluctantly finds himself entered into the lodge's fishing tournament.And from this point onwards this film's story gets more and more bogged down by inane stupidity with each passing minute.Thrown into this mundane mix is the story's token-Indian, Johnny Screaming Eagle, whose sole mission is to nickel & dime anyone (and everyone) out of their money.Ha! Ha! So funny, I forgot to laugh!

Mccadoo I remember watching this movie as a kid on a rainy Saturday or Sunday afternoon (along with others like "Father Goose") and finally bought the DVD last month. My wife, who is just three years younger than me had never heard of it. We watched it last Friday night and she loved it as much as I always have. It's just a light hearted, funny, feel good movie and a joy to watch. Yes, it is dated and yes, the sets are glaringly fake, but after a few minutes you forget about all of that and are pulled into the story and the fun that this movie is. A day or two later we watched "The Sweetest Thing" after someone recommended it to us. Both movies are romantic comedies, one from the 60's, one from the 2000's, and there the similarities end. In "Mans Favorite Sport?" the two main characters hesitate before kissing one another because it's such a big step. In "The Sweetest Thing" the main characters dance around a Chinese restaurant singing about mens penises. In "Man's Favorite Sport?" the raciest thing you see is Maria Percy's bare back when her zipper breaks, in "The Sweetest Thing" one of the characters takes a dress to the dry cleaner to try to get a semen stain out of it. The difference in decades and movie making, and societal mores, couldn't have been more apparent. Did I hate "The Sweetest Thing"? No, I actually found many parts of it funny though not the parts mentioned above. It's just that the romantic comedy has changed dramatically over the years, and not for the better. I'm not saying that we could ever go back, if "Man's Favorite Sport?" opened in theaters today I don't think it would make much money. We've become too jaded and hardened for that. 1964 was a different time, and this movie is a product of that time. And I highly recommend it, for everyone. It's two hours better spent then on most of what Hollywood is putting out today, I can promise you that. At the risk of sounding like an old fart (and I'm not, I'm in my early 50's), they just don't make movies like this anymore and while maybe that's as it should be, then again, maybe it isn't...

Karl Self Man's Favorite Sport? was intended as Hawks' homage to his own 1938 screwball comedy "Bringing Up Baby" with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, which I unfortunately absolutely didn't enjoy. And Man's Favorite Sport? starts unpromisingly, with Abigail Page (Paula Prentiss) and an unexplained German girl with the somewhat deceptive nickname "Easy" (Maria Perschy) girl-ganging up on Roger Willoughby (Rock Hudson). Fortunately the movie then pulls out all stops and becomes an unabashed showboat for Hollywood's dreamcouple Hudson and Prentiss. I've always liked Prentiss and she really shines here (although she's a bit too brassy for her persona); I hadn't seen much from Rock Hudson so far but I can't really blame women (and quite a few men, apparently) for swooning over him -- oh, he's so boyish, so demure, and yet so manly when the situation calls for it! And he always falls into the water and then needs to get out of his clothes with a frequency that was hitherto more characteristic of tacky Bollywood productions.I have profited from Hudson's performance in learning a lot about what women want. It's certainly more entertaining, and more insightful, than reading books on how to attract women from self-styled wannabe Casanovas.Well, the Hudson-Prentiss romance is the movie's forte, and it builds a tolerably entertaining story around it. It also curiously starts off with some sexy sport images that seem to be a generation ahead, and ends with a black-and-white scene which is designed to look like it was shot a generation or two ago.Harmless fun.