Marriage on the Rocks

This time capsule from a bygone era features an amazing Dean Martin bachelor pad and the delectable sight of Frank Sinatra go-go dancing in a rock club. Such campy pleasures are the main appeal of Marriage on the Rocks, a sitcom-style comedy about marital dissatisfaction and legal confusion. Sinatra's been married to Deborah Kerr for 19 years, but her boredom with his stick-in-the-mud personality has her leaping to shake things up--especially when a Mexican vacation accidentally divorces the two. How Dino gets himself wedged into this mess is the stuff of labored farce. The two Rat Pack buddies have done this so many times they barely rouse themselves to mix the highballs, with only the presence of Frank's daughter Nancy, in a supporting role, stirring the fatherly spark. Trini Lopez contributes a song, in the aforementioned nightclub, and Cesar Romero has a buffoonish role as a do-everything Mexican local official. The whole enterprise has the air of hedge-betting about it, and everybody looks as though they're fulfilling a contractual obligation. --Robert Horton