Nothing Happening

Move Over, Darling is a remake of a remake, but the new version doesn't half make it. In 1940 it was My Favorite Wife, with Irene Dunne and Gary Grant; last year it was Something's Got to Give, the picture Marilyn Monroe never finished. Now it has been tailored for Doris Day, who just can't bring herself to attempt MM's celebrated nude bathing scene. DD just drives a Chrysler convertible through an automatic car wash and lets it go at that.

The movie has the one virtue common to all Doris Day comedies: continence. But this time, James Garner appears to be playing the role long patented by Doris. Sex threatens him, and poor Jim has a tough time staying chaste. Garner is Doris' husband, but she has been missing since a plane crash five years earlier, so he marries Polly Bergen. The newlyweds have no sooner departed for a honeymoon in Monterey than out of a Navy sub hops this cute freckled blonde wearing blue denims and a sailor hat. "You're not too late!" screeches Doris' mother-in-law, Thelma Ritter. Then begins an unmercifully tedious rescue operation to keep Bergen and Garner from consummating their marriage.

Doris disguises herself as a Swedish nurse. Garner goes into traction, feigning a sprained back. At last he discovers that his missing missus spent all those moon-drenched nights marooned in an island paradise with bronzed He-Man Chuck Connors. She called him Adam, he called her Eve. "But nothing happened," Doris insists.

Of course nothing ever happens to a girl who can scrumptiously confide to her long-lost mate: "I want something I've been dreaming about for five years --a big fat double-dip chocolate soda." And in a courtroom climax, Doris demonstrates the All-America tactics that kept Eden intact: she crumples Connors with a swift jab to the midsection, slices one into the back of his neck, then whams her knee up for a jawbreaking finish. Adam is lucky to get away with his apple.

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