We're Not Married!

1952 "What Embarrassment When We Discover..."WE'RE NOT MARRIED!""
6.4| 1h26m| PG| en
Details

A Justice of the Peace performed weddings a few days before his license was valid. A few years later five couples learn they have never been legally married.

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Reviews

Scanialara You won't be disappointed!
Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!
Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
jarrodmcdonald-1 Are you ready for it? Here it comes! Married folks learn their weddings were not exactly legal. Yes, it's true!There are quite a few complications in this clever romp from 20th Century Fox. Screenwriter Nunnally Johnson has created a masterpiece and come up with a smart way to subvert the production code. In the story, he presents a vast array of characters that have received the benefit of marriage without actually having been hitched. In one couple's case, they already have a child! At least most of the couples on screen want to stay married/get married again. Which is more than most of the couples who probably are watching this movie.
zetes Painfully lame comedy. Victor Moore gets a license to marry people on Christmas, but doesn't realize it doesn't go into effect until New Year's Day. In that span, he marries five couples, and this film tells the five stories of what happens when they find out. The answer: nothing at all interesting. Not a single one of these scenarios is the least bit amusing. Only Marilyn Monroe completists ever need watch this film. I seriously don't even remember her story, though. I think she was a beauty pageant contestant who finds out she can't compete if she's married, but then she finds out she's not, so everything's okay. That's the level of storytelling we're dealing with here. Also starring Ginger Rogers, Mitzi Gaynor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Paul Douglas and Jane Darwell.
dougdoepke It's a clever premise, but the results have dated rather badly. Unfortunately, the comedy level never reaches the sparkle it needs, though the opening vignette (Rogers and Allen) comes close. Perhaps that's not surprising given Director Goulding's credits, which suggest he's more at home with Bette Davis melodrama than with material of this sort. Also, I'm surprised a big-budget studio like Fox didn't film this in Technicolor, which would have added a lot to the atmospherics. Instead, we get dour gray tones that undercut the light-hearted mood, making the movie look older than it is. But then, 1952 was a year Hollywood was looking to retool in the face of TV's onslaught. The following year would see an explosion of wide- screen color beyond the reach of the livingroom tube. As a result, this comedy venture may have been caught in the transition.To me, the Allen-Rogers sequence is the best. It's actually a rather scathing look at entertainment make-believe and the relentless assault of commercial advertising. In private life the two are barely speaking, while on radio they play a pair of happy marrieds who trade comic barbs in between pushing the sponsors' goofy products. It's rather deftly and bitingly done, even though the 57-year old Allen looks like he's been on a two-week bender. In passing—note that even though we see a number of living rooms, no TV's are in sight, only radios! This was Hollywood in its final stage of denial.The other vignettes are mildly entertaining, with a look at a number of performers on the way up the ladder-- Monroe, Marvin, Wayne, Gaynor. Especially satisfying is the delicious opportunity the letter provides Calhern to turn the tables on the gold-digging Gabor and her grasping attorney. At least the screenplay had the good sense not to reconcile these two at the end. But notice how the script insists the others be reconciled in typical 50's happy ending style. This certainly rings hollow in the case of the feuding Allen-Rogers. Given a second chance, it's hard to see how they could possibly stay together. In the case of Douglas-Arden, the most incisive of the vignettes, they may be totally bored with one another (check the dinner scene), but are too complaisant to actually change. That strikes me as maybe not the funniest, but at least as the most realistic of the episodes.Anyway, whatever the comedy lacks in sparkle, it is revealing of its time—radio, beauty pageants, war in Korea (implied in Bracken's troop ship). But I'm afraid that the clever premise plays better than the mild results.
caa821 A previous person described this film as "fluff." This is a perfect word to describe it, and should contain a capital "F."But it's also entertaining and interesting. It has a host of 1930's and 1940's actors (and some pre-dating talking pictures), as well "youngsters," Mitzi Gaynor, Marilyn Monroe and Lee Marvin (latter in an uncredited bit part).The premise is pristine, and the "plot" revolves in a silly fashion around the supposed customs of that period, with people scurrying about with issues which wouldn't warrant any dramatic presentation today.The thin plot involves several couples whose marriages were ruled invalid by the governor, since they were married by a justice-of-the-peace, near the end of the year sometime back, with his certification not valid until the following January 1st.Rogers and Allen are a pair with a morning "couples" radio program (seemingly consisting of nothing but sponsor plugs and inane "nasty-nice" banter), with a sham marriage for purely economic purposes. Bracken and Gaynor are a young couple who need to be remarried before his army unit embarks, or else their expected child won't be legitimate, but (according to his sergeant) "a foul ball." Golddigger Gabor (not a stretch here) literally faints when the letter from the governor arrives at her wealthy husband's (Calhoun) office, while her lawyer is discussing her plundering his assets during a divorce settlement (precipitated by a set-up when a fully-clothed impostor, who resembles a conservatively-dressed elementary teacher poses as his wife in a hotel room, for about three minutes, while her confederates note the incident). Although released in 1952, this is strictly a "40's" flick. Even then, certainly the governor would simply have effected a special edict making these unions legitimate, and even if not, Gabor, however devious her purpose, would have been able to claim some sort of common-law entitlement, or rights under whatever passed for "palimony" then.Still, it's now a nostalgic piece, with nearly all the thespians gone, except for a couple or so, including Zsa Zsa, now 90, plus however many years are still fudged from her birth date.