Maybe it was because I was expecting the cowardly Bob Hope and the scatterbrained Lucy Ricardo, but somehow I couldn't get into The Facts of Life. It had nowhere near the quality comedy that characterized Fancy Pants and Sorrowful Jones.

Bob and Lucille play a couple of 40 something marrieds, a bit of a stretch for Bob to be sure, but nothing that other Hollywood leading men weren't also doing. Problem is they're not married to each other. Their respective mates are Ruth Hussey and Don DeFore. Both couples are part of a set of California neighbors who apparently do everything together, not unlike the gangster couples in Goodfellas. Not that the men are involved in anything that illegal and risky.

Anyway DeFore due to business reasons is delayed on their planned trip to Acapulco and Hussey gets sick while down there. Bob and Lucille get thrown together and one thing leads to another.

But the fates do conspire against them, they just can't seem to close the deal on the affair. I think you got the rest of the story.

There were a whole lot of opportunities for the type of comedy both Bob and Lucille do that creators Melvin Frank and Norman Panama just passed by.

Yet both of them got good reviews generally and to be sure their performances were restrained. Maybe too restrained.

As the title song of that other Facts of Life creation says, it takes a lot to get them right, and this film didn't.

Bob Hope and Lucille Ball have been happily married to their spouses for years but, accidentally thrown together for a few days, they improbably overcome their mutual dislike and fall for each other. Back in Los Angeles, they sneak into a drive-in for a bit of necking but are almost caught. They then attempt an assignation at a motel room in the Valley but a drunken Ball sends Hope out for some black coffee and he gets lost, so she gives up on him and takes a cab home. Still determined, they lunge at the opportunity to meet at a cabin in the woods near Monterey while their families are out of town. It's no use. The cabin's roof seems to be a colander, Ball unwittingly buys a rabbit instead of a chicken at the market, there is an argument, a pratfall into a mud puddle, and they realize they truly love their own families and resume their ultra-normal lives.

It was written by Panama and Frank, the team that gave us the Road pictures with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby but, for whatever reason, they provide this film with only an occasional chuckle. Worse turkeys were ahead for Hope -- "I'll Take Sweden," "Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number." The movie is imbued with something that almost amounts to an element of tragedy. This was released in 1960 and both Hope and Ball were beyond their prime, and here they are, stuck in a plot that has them acting like teenagers suffering from some sort of glandular condition. Of course their ages can't be blamed on them, and in fact Lucille Ball is pretty keen, but Hope is out of his element trying to wring laughs from such a sodden story.

The story itself is a sad one. The point is that when you're stuck in a rut, you're REALLY stuck in that rut. The ruts we are witness to are boring and unfulfilling, thoroughly routinized. Hope and Ball return from Acapulco not only in love but filled with pride at the 350-pound marlin they caught. But when they try to tell their families, no one is interested. Ball's husband is buried in his morning newspaper and mutters "uhm"s from time to time, a weary cliché. Hope's situation is worse. He happily begins his fish story at breakfast but the two kids interrupt him each time by whining and complaining to their mother about wanting to be excused from gym period at school or staying overnight at a friend's house. Hope finally corners the man who picks up and delivers dry cleaning, and he responds, "Three hundred and fifty pounds, eh? A man down the block caught one that was 370." Poof.

Hope and Ball never do get to spend the night together, or even an hour wrestling in the back seat. It's all very innocent. It reflects the values of the 1950s or even the 1940s, when adultery was an unforgivable sin and rebellion was smoking corn silk behind the barn. I'm sure more could have been done with it, but I'm not sure exactly what.

This is a pretty good movie, as far as situation comedies go. Very typical of the movies Hope was making at that time. Pepole who have only seen the Hope and Crosby Road shows think Hops did only one-liner jokes, actually more of his movies were in the vein of this one. I watched all these movies when they came out in the theaters. I started watching Ball and Hope in movies when I was 8 years old, and they were young people. Mostly, I get a kick out of reading the reader comments. Mature for it's time, Advanced for movies made in that era etc. This was NOT considered a racy movie for the times. There were many with a much more " like today's movies" story line and script. The bedroom farce movies were being made and shown to general public audiences i the 40, and take a look at some of the movies made in the late 20s and 30s, before censorship stepped in. They didn't use swear words and the language they use today in movies in the 30s, but those people made some really "broad minded?" movies then. This was just a run of the mill, cutest movie of the times. If you liked Hope in this, you will also like, That Certain Feeling-- 1956-- Bob Hope and Eva Maire Saint The Iron Pettycoat---- 1956-- Bob Hope and Katherine Hepburn I'll Take Sweden------ 1965-- Bob Hope, Dina merrill You don't want to over look Bob Hope in Beau James--- 1957. Tis is the story of the flamboyant mayor of New York City.