M S
This is pretty terrible, but there are a few good moments. For example, Bob Hope is talking to his boss and says. "I didn't sleep last night." His boss replies, "You should talk to my doctor, he can't sleep either." That was the highlight for me.
Robert J. Maxwell
How to sum up this turkey? Pastel capri pants, the twist, bouffant hair, chewing gum pop music with lyrics like "I'll take Sweden -- ya, ya, ya." California: real locations. Sweden: back projections. Well, maybe that gets the general idea across but we're still left with the plot.It's best described as a clash between cultures. Two, in fact. One is generational. Bob Hope is a morally upright well-to-do executive (or something) whose daughter, the toothsome and toothy Tuesday Weld, is anxious for marriage or at least a taste of the thrills that go with it. Hope sweeps her up with him and they fly to Sweden to escape the plans of Frankie Avalon, a broke biker who wants to settle down with her. Rather than marriage to a kid who sings song like that, her quaint honour should turn to dust, and into ashes all his lust.The other conflict is cultural in the anthropological sense. At the time, pre-marital intercourse was accepted as normal in Sweden, while America was still in the grip of the virginity mystique. Jeremy Slate is the handsome young host of Hope and his daughter in Sweden. Slate wants Weld to give it up before marriage. She's torn -- between two choices, that is. I won't give away the ending and deprive you your gasp of surprise.I -- I'm stumped in an attempt to rationalize the movie's popularity. It isn't that movie like this can't be done as effective comedies. "Take Her, She's Mine," had Jimmy Stewart and Sandra Dee in a similar embarrassment and it was slyly funny. It's that the jokes here, on which the entire enterprise depends, are so unfunny.One example, then I quit. Slate picks up Hope and Weld when they arrive in Sweden but there isn't room enough for all of them plus their luggage in the Volkswagon beetle, so Hope has to stand up with his torso sticking out of the sun roof. A school bus pulls alongside and a little boy squirts Hope with a water pistol. Hope rolls his eyes and remarks, "Don't they have rest stops on that bus?" The end.
bkoganbing
You have to love Bob Hope's singular ability to be behind the times in terms of getting young teen idols to give his films a little youthful appeal. Two years after the British invasion where the music scene would irrevocably be changed, Hope casts Frankie Avalon and Tuesday Weld in I'll Take Sweden considerably after their time as teen idols had come and gone.In fact the film never got closer to Sweden than Big Bear Lake and Lake Arrowhead the two California locations chosen to represent the pretty parts of Scandinavia. Which is a real pity because Stockholm is known as the Paris of the north and has reputation as a beautiful city. I wonder why producer Edward Small and Hope played on the cheap and didn't bother to go to Sweden to film this picture.Hope's in a role James Stewart played better in Take Her She's Mine as the harassed father of a shapely teenage girl. In case you're wondering, Tuesday Weld is the shapely teenage girl. Hope disapproves of boyfriend Frankie Avalon whom he thinks of as a beach bum dead head, living in a trailer at the beach and no prospects for a job. He decides on impulse to take a job in Sweden with his company and relocate. It starts to work out real well and Weld's found herself a nice Swedish boy in Jeremy Slate. Widower Hope's not doing too bad either with Dina Merrill. But when Hope finds out about the Scandinavian sexual attitudes, this red state American is saying 'not with my daughter, you Viking Casanova'.I'd have rated this film higher had we actually seen a bit of Sweden here. But for all this it just turns into a typical bedroom comedy as Hope and Merrill find out that Slate and Weld have registered in the same hotel for the same reason and Hope goes tearing around the place looking to save Weld from a fate worse than death. Oh, and he's brought Frankie Avalon over from California to help finding new virtues in him he hadn't seen before.You know what the dumbest thing in the film was. The fact that a no tell hotel in Sweden people register there as Mr.&Mrs. John Smith for anonymity. You'd think they'd register with the Swedish equivalent of same in Sweden.
spizzmole23
Everyone should watch this film, not because it is funny (it isn't), but as a guide to show you what lengths studios & stars will go to cover up a stars physical flaw.Whenever Bob Hope is on screen not wearing a hat, there is an annoying shadow on top of his head. At first I thought this was just a case of a bad director shooting the shadow of a boom mike, but as this is present throughout the whole film, and the shadow is only on Hope's head, I figured out that is was their way of hiding the fact that Bob Hope was balding. I was fascinated by this, so much in fact, that I eventually tuned out the movie (a pretty easy feat), and just starting watching the shadow on Bob Hope's head.
AD
