The Tender Trap [HD]

"You are the softest girl."
- Julie Gillis to Charlie Reader (responding to his offer of dinner): "Well, I've only known you a few minutes, but you seem fairly nice. You're even attractive in a...offbeat, beat-up sort of way."
- Charlie: "Thanks a lot."
- Julie: "But I can't have dinner with every nice, attractive man I meet. It's not part of my plan."
- Charlie: "How's that plan again?"
- Julie: "My marriage plan."

Frank Sinatra plays New York theater agent and swingin' bachelor Charlie Y. Reader, whose tryst with a hottie is interrupted by his sarcastic, longtime pal Joe from Indianapolis, who pays him a visit and then becomes a house guest (he'd just left his wife, Ethel, you see?). When Joe marvels at the series of beautiful dames Frank sees ("Where do all these tomatoes come from?"), Frank tells him, "Sure, it's fun. But let's face it...I would be happy to trade this rat race for your set-up in two seconds." Turns out Frank is weary of the fast lane and longs for domesticated...

Subversive!
*The Tender Trap* has got to be one of the most scathing indictments of Fifties life ever put to screen. The screenwriters practically beat us over the head with their disgust of the reigning conformities. It's right in the title, after all: "Trap".

I'm afraid that, today, this movie will be misunderstood. People will see it as another dumb Sinatra Swinging-Guy movie with a hep little tune thrown in. You gotta read between the lines with this one: consider the Debbie Reynolds character. She says things like "A woman just isn't FULFILLED until she's married and has children, dontcha think?" Her character has a promising career as a stage singer, but will throw it away toot-sweet just as soon as she can find herself a husband. In fact, her single-minded, frenzied ambition for landing a hubby should send up the red flags for you. The screenwriters, in their own frenzy of sarcasm, have created a terrifying figure in the chillingly perky frame of Miss...

Worth it for the title song.
I didn't grow up with Frank Sinatra, so the title song was just a nice Sinatra tune I'd heard a few times before I saw this film. Watching Debbie Reynolds and Sinatra perform it was sublime. (the 'finale' performance is dreadful, however)

As for the film itself, all you really need to know is that Sinatra is the New York bachelor, still playing the field into his thirties. Reynolds is dead-set on getting married: she has a deadline picked out, among other things. Sinatra goes after Reynolds.

While at first I found Reynolds' character to be over the top, the scene in which she's scouting out her future home decorations sold me. She's eccentric, but once she finds her man she nestles right in. Sinatra is right at home in the role, of course.

As to the plot, it does drag, but I think the only thing this film is guilty of is treating the issues it brings up with respect. Naturally, it all comes to the climactic conflict, and I applaud The Tender Trap for not sweeping it...

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