Plot summary (with spoilers): It's a period piece. And not just cuz they're dressed like ladies. HEY-O!
It's 1929 and some cops and robbers are having a high speed Untouchables-type shoot out over some bootleg liquor.
Then we go inside a nightclub, where saxophonist Joe and bassist Jerry are playing in a band. They exposit all over each other for a bit while exchanging witty bon mots. The upshot is, they're poor, but they'll be getting paid tomorrow. Joe wants to gamble and double their winnings. Jerry thinks that's crazy, but Joe usually talks him into things. Suddenly, the nightclub gets raided by the cops for selling liquor, and Joe and Jerry barely escape without being arrested. They go to like, a musician's temp agency and ask for a new job. The only thing available is a job in Florida for three weeks, and they need a saxophonist and a bassist. Great! Except that it's an all-girl band. If either one of them played the sad trombone, they would surely play it now. Wah. Wah.
Then they go to some parking garage, and stumble upon a bunch of mobsters. Some mobsters have big machine guns while other mobsters have no machine guns. Very quickly, the only mobsters left are the ones with big machine guns. The mobsters see Joe and Jerry hiding and chase after them, but our heroes manage to comically scramble away. They decide they only have one option left.
Comic smash cut to--dudes looking like ladies. Joe and Jerry are in drag, stumbling on heels, walking to the train station. They sarcastically call each other "Josephine" and "Geraldine" and fret about pulling this off. Soon, they're passed by a sexy blonde with big bazooms and a cute little rear end. Jerry says it's like she runs on a motor and dames are like a whole different sex! They get on the train with the other girls in the band, and introduce themselves as Josephine and Daphne. Tony Curtis does a double take at Jack Lemmon for using a different name than planned. For some reason, that really tickled me.
So "Daphne" goes to the restroom and sees the hot blonde in the back sneaking some liquor. Her name's Sugar, and she sings in the band. She'll even sing to the President if you ask her nice. Sugar says her goal is to bag a rich man once they get to Florida, as a woman should. She complains that in the past she's always dated regular guys and wound up with the "fuzzy end of the lollipop" which is probably a really clever sex pun I can't quite figure out.
Once they arrive at the hotel, a rich man named Osgood Fielding III approaches. (Sidebar: I always wanted to be a "III" growing up. It just seemed so regal). But Osgood wants "Daphne". D'oh! Jerry fights off Osgood's advances, and slaps him for trying to get fresh, etc. Meanwhile, "Josephine" befriends Sugar and learns of her plans to snag a rich man. The other girls ask Sugar and Daphne and Josephine to join them at the beach, but Josephine begs off.
Cut to the ladies plus Daphne frolicking in the water and Daphne playfully getting the girls to jump up and down and keeps "accidentally" bumping into Sugar. It's not funny, per se, but it's right on the edge of being funny. Jack Lemmon is certainly trying his damndest. Meanwhile Joe hits the beach dressed as a man in a fancy yachting outfit. He manages to get Sugar's attention and is very rude and dismissive of her while dropping hints that he's a millionaire and owns a yacht. And he's totally doing something weird with his voice. Wait..it's a Cary Grant impression! And I recognized it! This is officially my proudest AFI moment.
So they get back to the hotel room and Osgood calls Daphne asking for a date. Joe answers the phone and Osgood says he'd like to take Daphne out that night on his yacht. Joe says Daphne hates yachts but she'll be happy to meet him on the shore. He then hangs up and tells Jerry his plan, which is this: He'll pretend to be a millionaire and take the hot blonde bombshell onto the yacht all night and Jerry will stay in drag and fight off the advances of a horny old man all night. Jerry says, "Oh no, you don't! I'll never do that in a million years!"
SMASH CUT.
Jerry's in drag. Osgood takes him by the arm and leads him to his car.
Joe's on the yacht with Sugar. Joe tells Sugar he was hurt by a woman once a long time ago, and since then he is essentially asexual. She takes it upon herself to "cure" him through repeated kisses, and crawling on top of him, etc. "Anything yet?" "Nope. Nothing". This part's mildly amusing. Not laughing, but smiling.
Sugar's seduction attempts are intercut with Osgood and Daphne doing the tango on a ballroom floor. Jack Lemmon's deadpan thousand-yard stare as he's being dipped and twirled around finally gets me to laugh out loud.
Finally, it's the next morning. Joe and Sugar kiss each other goodbye, and Joe goes back to his hotel room. Wait a minute! That means...oh, Hays Code, you poor thing. You're losing it, buddy.
Joe enters and sees Jerry still in drag lying on the bed and humming the tango and looking deliriously happy. Hmm. Jerry says he's engaged.
"Who's the lucky girl?"
"Me." says Jerry.
WHA???? Joe protests that men can't marry men! That's just fucking insane. Next will come goats marrying household appliances or something.
Jerry says he plans to marry Osgood and then reveal all for quick annulment and large cash payout. He dances around the room still humming the tango. He reveals the fancy diamond necklace Osgood bought him. Joe says they'll hock it. Jerry tells Joe that he can't see Sugar again because she'll know he's not rich. Joe says normally he would just hit and quit that, but he feels guilty now. He calls Sugar and tells her that he's been sent to the other side of the world on business and he can't see her anymore. She cries because it's true love or something.
Then the mobsters randomly show up, under the guise of having a "Friends of Italian Opera" convention. Joe and Jerry are all set to leave the hotel, but see the mobsters and go running back into their hotel room and back into drag. But the mobsters recognize them and chase them around comically. Then Jerry and Joe hide under a big table in one of the hotel convention rooms and the mobsters meet there, and different mobsters are mad at the original mobsters for letting two witnesses escape and they shoot the shit out of the original mobsters. Then Jerry and Joe pop back up and run out of the room and the new mobsters chase them.
Jerry calls Osgood and says they'll get married now, tonight, just meet him at the docks. They run around some more, and Joe and Jerry, still in drag, happen upon Sugar singing with the band. She's weeping and inconsolable. Joe approaches and tells her not to let any man make her feel this way. He kisses her. She accepts the kiss, and then leans back, shocked. "Josephine!" Joe and Jerry run away, and Sugar struggles with the fact that she was turned on. Ooh, very cutting edge, movie. Well done.
So Joe and Jerry run to the docks where Osgood is waiting in a little motorboat. Jerry introduces Joe as a bridesmaid. Then Sugar comes running up and gets on as well. The mobsters are left in the dust.
Then on the motorboat, Joe takes off his wig and tells Sugar he's a man. He says he's not rich, either. Sugar totally goes with all of it, and says she loves getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop after all.
(That's gotta be a sex pun, right? Let's workshop this: the "sweet" end of the lollipop is a rich guy, representing the ideal and the "fuzzy" end is a poor guy, representing what you settle for. Hmm. Do you suppose it has something to do with circumcision?)
Then "Daphne" tells Osgood they can't get married.
Why?
I'm not a natural blonde. I smoke. I drink like a fish. I can't have children.
Osgood blithely shoots down all these objections with assurances that he loves her still.
Jerry takes off his wig. "I'm a man, dammit."
Osgood doesn't flinch. "Nobody's perfect". Jack Lemmon does a beautiful double take that makes me laugh for probably the third time as credits roll.
Review: Again, we run into my problem with Olden Times comedies, in that they're not really funny. This was made in 1959, so it wasn't all that far back, and indeed it wasn't painfully unfunny, just not terribly funny either. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are fighting tooth and nail through sheer force of will to make me laugh and when it works, it does so despite the painful groaner lines and totally played out scenarios. I mean, there must've been a dozen iterations of "What kind of woman are you?" "Oh, if you only knew", throughout the thing that I guess was hilarious and edgy at the time, but now is just corny. Plus, it has all the cliche moments of the "dudes look like ladies" genre, which is never as funny or as edgy as the movies think it is. Yes, I know, this movie probably invented most of those cliches, but that doesn't make them any easier to watch now.
However, Lemmon and Curtis are genuinely funny and personable, plus there's a bellboy I forgot to mention, a teen kid who hits on "Josephine" a few times, and he's super cheesy and keeps calling Tony Curtis "doll", and he's pretty good, too. Marilyn is fine, but definitely not at the caliber of the two guys.
Stars: Three out of five.
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