There's A Girl In My Soup is the 1970 film version of a stage play. Peter Sellers plays a louche middle-aged womanising TV personality, totally convinced of his own irresistibility. Goldie Hawn, in her second featured film appearance (after her Best Supporting Actress Oscar in Cactus Flower made it clear that the ditzy blonde from Laugh-In was, after all, just a performance) plays a young American who is singularly unimpressed, and immune to his advances. He has to offer her something genuine of himself before she will embark on an affair: he then falls for her, an experience for which he is totally unprepared.
While this movie is far from perfect, there is much to enjoy. Both Sellers and Hawn give of their best, there is some sparkling dialogue, and there were some good songs by Mike D'Abo on the soundtrack.
Above everything, though, this is a very 1970 film, in terms of both its look and feel, and also the attitudes portrayed.
There's a Girl in My Soup
1970
Action / Comedy / Romance
There's a Girl in My Soup
1970
Action / Comedy / Romance
Keywords: lovelondon, englandfrancecelebritychef
Plot summary
TV personality Robert Danvers, an exceedingly vain rotter, seduces young women daily, never staying long with one. He meets his match in 19-year-old American Marion, who is available but refuses any romantic illusions. Her candor and cynicism put him off at first, but after he sees her breaking up with her rocker boyfriend, he's attracted to her and invites her on an idyllic fortnight in France. She slowly pokes holes in his artifice and he comes to care for her. When they return to Londonwith the press thinking they're married, they come to a crossroads: go back to their old lives, marry each other, or invent a new, open relationship. Is Robert up to it?
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Good fun, but of its time
This soup has too many crackers.
While glamorous girls like Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda and Raquel Welch had become established stars by the late 1960's, it was the quirky girls or British ladies who got the share if acclaim as the decade changed. Between Liza, Barbra and Goldie, each of them took home an Oscar, while also topping the list of box office stars as well as the headlines. To pair quirky Goldie with eccentric funnyman Peter Sellers seemed an ideal pairing, but their film was doomed to become a dated product of its time within a few years.
For Goldie to all of a sudden be falsely called "Mrs. Danvers" (Seller's character's last name) is an inside joke, if an obscure one. Sellers is the British Dick Cavett, but a confirmed bachelor suddenly matched to the much younger Hawn, taking her to a wine show in France and finding romance he didn't expect. They actually work well together, not surprising considering that he eventually became involved down the road with the equally off the beam Liza.
It's not just the sexual freedom of this era that dates it, but everything in its technical set up. Hawn is pretty emancipated, but changes from feisty, independent and often difficult, to vulnerable and feminine. Sellers' character changes as well, for different reasons. There are funny moments, touching moments and ultimately bitter sweet.
she's great, he's the worst
Robert Danvers (Peter Sellers) is a womanizing TV food critic. He picks up Marion (Goldie Hawn) from a party and brings her home. She's willing to sleep with him but seems immune to his charms.
Normally, the age difference is a killer. Goldie has a few of these where her natural charms make her great and the guy is often a creep. In this case, she is not a helpless naive little girl. She is sexually liberated and self-confident. Robert is a creep but there is hope for him. I do wish that she has a more humanizing effect on him in the end. I don't like the ending. The best ending is for her to go off on her own to get her independence while he pines for what he had with her. Nobody changes for the better and that's not a good thing for this movie.