Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

HotToastyRag Only in the 1950s could a movie like Dream Wife be made! Cary Grant is engaged to strong, career-woman Deborah Kerr, but he expresses his desire for a more meek, stereotypically feminine companion. He breaks off the engagement and decides to marry Betta St. John instead. However, since Betta is a real princess, the State Department assigns Deborah to act as official chaperone between the two until the wedding!While the plot is pretty thin, the best part of this film is the banter between Cary and Deborah. They have fantastic comic timing together, and they reprised their pairing later in An Affair to Remember and The Grass is Greener. One of my all-time favorite lines comes from this film: the pair is arguing about all the things they hated about each other when they were a couple, complaints they're now allowed to voice since they're not on good behavior anymore. Cary says he always hated Deborah's perfume. "My perfume? But you always used to ask me to put it on!" Deborah exclaims. He replies, "You always wore it! What was I supposed to do, ask you to take it off?" If you're laughing, rent the hilarious The Grass is Greener. Dream Wife has a few funny lines, but it probably won't end up being your favorite old movie.

JohnHowardReid No record of copyright, though allegedly copyrighted in 1953 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn picture. New York opening at the Rivoli: 29 July 1953. U.S. release: 19 June 1953. U.K. release: 13 July 1953. Australian release: 5 August 1953. 99 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Clemson Reade, who wants a wife in the home, not in business, breaks with Effie, a State Department official who is too busy with an oil crisis to have time for matrimony. Remembering a comely princess, Tarji, whom he met on a trip to Bukistan and the fact that she had been schooled from birth in the art of pleasing men, Reade proposes via cable. Because of the oil situation, the State Department steps in and assigns Effie to see that her ex-fiancé sticks to protocol in his new courtship. The princess comes to the United States, but the feminine craft of Effie soon has Tarji figuring that emancipation is more fun than being a dream wife.COMMENT: Whatever promise this one-joke romantic comedy may have had, is negated by a conventional plot and strictly routine direction - this was the first film screenwriter Sidney Sheldon (Annie Get Your Gun, Anything Goes) directed, the first of two, the other being The Buster Keaton Story, the direction of which has even less to commend it than Dream Wife has. Doubtless Cary Grant (Sheldon was involved in the writing of Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer) had something to do with the assignment of Sheldon to this pic. Be this as it may, the direction is as stolidly unimaginative as can be, and whatever humor was in the original screenplay has been effectively smothered by Sheldon's heavy handling. Deborah Kerr, in some stunning Helen Rose costumes, looks absolutely ravishing and while she has the best of everything - clothes, camera angles, coiffure - Betta St John is also allowed to make some impression as the princess; but the two other attractive young lasses in the cast, Patricia Tiernan as Miss Kerr's secretary and Mary Lawrence as Mrs Malvine get hardly a look-in. Walter Pidgeon has virtually nothing to do and Bruce Bennett has a miniscule role. Take-any-job Grant walks through the proceedings with his usual not-too-involved air. There are a few chuckles in the script. Trimmed to 75 or even 80 minutes, it might make passable entertainment. Production values are moderate. Miss Kerr gets the lion's share of behind-the camera attention.

edwagreen Miserable picture with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. 4 years later they teamed again to make the memorable "An Affair to Remember." That was a movie! This was utter junk, at it's worst.We are fully aware of the cultural differences between the Middle East and our culture. Kerr looked like she was annoyed with the whole film and rightfully so!We know of the subservience of the Middle Eastern woman to the man. They didn't have to highlight this. The young lady sure learned quickly about American mores and she acted the part accordingly.Walter Pidgeon had little to do here and this wasn't the way for Bruce Bennett to be ending his acting career, or for Richard Anderson to begin his.How are they going to keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paris? Easy. Keep away from this putrid film.Am so tired of seeing an American or British woman who is totally immersed in her career to a point that she will forsake marriage and family. Hillary Clinton and other ladies, you've come a long way ladies!

Ethereal-Cloud I really love Cary Grant but this movie must have been one of those scripts that crossed his desk and was marked with a $$$ sign on it.There's no excuse for such schlock. There was no chemistry with his fiancée 'Effie' and there was none with his 'to be bride' Tarji'. The whole damn movie was a mess. There's probably some goofs that's going to complain about racism or sexism in the whole mess, I was just wondering if there was another movie that the very cute actress Betta St. John is in. She's a looker but even she's no reason to bother with this flop of a 'movie'. I wonder what were they thinking???? I honestly can't give this more than a couple of stars in good faith.