Cactus Flower Reviews

A cute and fun sexual farce, Cactus Flower is occasionally forgettable, but highly entertaining. The plot has all the makings of a great screwball comedy, but the clearly stage-bound origins of the material are never given the proper film conversion.

Walter Matthau, the great curmudgeon as I lovingly think of him, plays a dentist who lies to his decades younger girlfriend about being married. If he’s “married,” he doesn’t have to marry his cooky, hippie “mistress,” played incredibly well by Goldie Hawn. So, instead of telling his girlfriend the truth about his bachelorhood, he enlists his secretary, Ingrid Bergman proving the comedic surprise and delight of the film, to stand-in as a wife. Couple swapping and romantic entanglements naturally ensue.

That it never rises to greatness isn’t that much of a problem when you consider the three leads. Bergman, having spent most of her career elegantly suffering and being the definition of luminous, is having a ball playing for laughs. Her comfort-level with comedy is astounding when you consider how often she’s associated with serious, prestige dramas like Casablanca in our collective memory. Matthau is in fine form and Hawn proves to be a sparkplug whenever the film needs it. They’ve been better (The Fortune Cookie and Private Benjamin leap immediately to mind), but the three of them together create some real sparks. It’s a pity they couldn’t have been put together in a better film.