The Horizontal Lieutenant Reviews

Absolutely nothing works in The Horizontal Lieutenant. From the predictable title straight on down to the indifferent plotting there’s very little to engage you here. Jim Hutton mugs and falls down a lot, Paula Prentiss plays the sensible foible, and there’s a bunch of supporting players that drift in and out for easy laughs. If they were trying to make Hutton/Prentiss a viable romantic-comedy duo for the ages, then they needed to give them better material. Same could be said for the supporting players, like Oscar winner Miyoshi Umeki wasted in a role that basically boils down to her yelling at the Americans in Japanese and singing one song in half-Japanese/half-English. The whole thing feels frozen in amber from the early 60s sex comedies in which the title did most of the clever jokes.