The New Comedies

That Touch of Mink. No one cares what happens to a girl on a yacht, so does anyone care what happens to a girl (Doris Day) who is outfitted at Bergdorf Goodman, flown to Bermuda by jet, and escorted into a plush hotel by her millionaire (Cary Grant) would-be seducer? Well, Scriptwriters Stanley Shapiro and Nate Monaster do, since they stand to make a great deal more money out of the heroine's virginity than any virgin ever has.

"I forgot my toothbrush." says Doris Day, who suddenly realizes she is not THAT KIND OF GIRL. "I always carry a spare," says Cary Grant, with a shark-toothed grin. Doris knows that the best way to repulse a man is to look repulsive. She develops a rash, and Cary spends the night playing gin rummy with another sugarless daddy. Bye-bye baby, says Cary, suggesting that she return to the sanctity of Upper Sandusky.

"I've got to prove to him that I'm a woman," says furious Doris. "There are easier ways to prove it." rasps her file-voiced pal, Audrey Meadows. Back flies Doris to the love lair. The "Baron von Richthofen of the boudoir'' follows, but this time Cary finds Doris totally crocked, with her big toe stuck in the neck of an empty fifth. He gets to play a lot of gin rummy this way.

Once one is resigned to the fatuous, bankrupt conventions of will-she, won't-she, should-she, shouldn't-she, Mink offers a modicum of fun. The best line has nothing to do with the plot: "Some day there's going to be an uprising and the masses will regain the misery they're entitled to."

Many so-so lines are salvaged by the neat professional finesse of Grant, Day and Meadows, with Gig Young contributing an amusing portrayal of a financial adviser who is having his head candled.

Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. Dad (James Stewart) has a voice like a defective windshield wiper. Mom (Maureen O'Hara) is a handsome illustration of what Oscar Wilde meant when he said that women as a sex are "sphinxes without secrets." Son (Michael Burns) is a TV idiot, who blinks like a mole in daylight. Daughter (Lauri Peters), upset by her teeth braces, keeps her face knotted in such a wooden expression that she could pass for a ventriloquist's dummy. It would be better if these people had never met, but in this family-situation formula comedy they have.

Mom's quaint notion is that they all love one another, and that a month's vacation together on the West Coast will help them show it. They get to a crumbling gingerbread monstrosity by the sea. It's a barrel-of-fun house, of course, with live-in bats and a pump that requires surgery. Before Dad can get the luggage stowed away ("My friends all call me Redcap"), his two married daughters show up with broody broods in tow. and in obvious need of a good divorce counselor. One little grandson, who seems to have been born under a rock, calls Stewart "Boom-pah," and Boom-pah calls him a "little creep," though creepy would be more exact.

As the reels roll on, Dad, the inept irascible bumbler, turns into a smarmy Mr. Fixit, and even gets his tooth-traumatized daughter a date with Fabian, the tonsil titan of the teenette set. who breathes all over a song called Cream Puff. In one genuinely funny sequence, John McGiver. as a laconic bird watcher, cues Stewart, during a predawn to post-dusk ordeal, on how to spot man's feathered friends. Since there are no recognizable humans in it, Mr. Hobbs is really strictly for the bird watchers.

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