Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (June 28, 2023)
To paraphrase a popular expression, I was a few weeks ago old when I learned a 1963 film version of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father existed. I recall the late 1960s/early 1970s Bill Bixby TV show from my childhood, but not until recently did I realize the property enjoyed an earlier cinematic incarnation.
Itself based on Mark Toby’s 1961 novel, we meet young Eddie Corbett (Ronny Howard). Eddie’s mother Helen recently passed away so he lives in Manhattan just with his dad Tom (Glenn Ford) and new housekeeper Mrs. Livingston (Roberta Sherwood).
A busy radio executive, Tom seems to lack time to date, but Eddie wants a stepmother so he takes matters into his own hands. This leads Tom on a series of romantic escapades engineered by his son.
Perhaps Courtship made sense in the context of 1963. However, 60 years later, it feels like an odd piece of work.
I don’t mean that due to its variety of anachronistic attitudes and concepts. I don’t judge the film because it represents a slice of its culture.
Instead, I can’t get over the fact that Eddie’s mom is barely in the ground and yet everyone expects Tom to land a new woman virtually immediately. Were folks in the early 60s so obsessed with the nuclear family that they insisted on remarried parents before the corpse gets cold?
Maybe, but I doubt it – at least to this extreme - and it just feels weird. Courtship can’t connote these attitudes well, so it simply seems bizarre that poor Tom gets no time to mourn before his friends and colleagues all push him to “move on”.
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Perhaps this wouldn’t grate on me if I found a more engaging experience from Courtship. Unfortunately, the movie generates an awkward mix of light comedy, romance and drama.
Or melodrama most of the time, as Courtship veers toward the mawkish side of the street. When it leans in this direction, it avoids sincere emotions and favors broad, over the top material.
Essentially a light rom-com at heart, these scenes tend to come out of nowhere and form an awkward fit. The dramatic sequences don’t blend with the rest of the film and seem like forced attempts at seriousness.
If the comedy worked, this wouldn’t be an issue. However, these elements also fail to connect.
Courtship essentially follows an episodic nature, as we go through the various escapades. Too many of these fail to really link to the overall story, such as odd and pointless detours with Dollye Daly (Stella Stevens) and disc jockey Norman Jones (Jerry Van Dyke).
There seems to be no logical reason Courtship runs nearly two hours, as it fails to find useful content to fill that span. This means we end up with extraneous scenes such as the Dollye/Norman moments that just pad the movie without real purpose.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the movie never leaves any question which woman Tom will choose. No spoilers, of course, but the film comes with an obvious candidate, so this leaves the tale without any suspense.
Courtship hopes to entertain us with all the episodes I mentioned, but these fail to zing. An odd mix of glib comedy and overwrought melodrama, the movie feels tedious.