Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)

Review by All Movie Guide
Its premise (Broadway as seen through the eyes of a major theatrical critic) aside, Please Don't Eat the Daisies could easily have been indistinguishable from any number of 1960s family comedies. Yet, while it's not a classic film for all time, Daisies is surprisingly bright, genial, and, yes, genuinely funny and charming. Credit surely must go to screenwriter Isobel Lennart, but pinning down exactly why her screenplay works so well is rather difficult. It's well-structured, certainly, but so are many lesser comedies. It also has its share of contrivances and artifice, which should work against it -- yet somehow, those flaws don't amount to much. And while there's genuine comedy in some of the lines and situations, it's not the kind of wit that produces quotable moments. Of course, it helps that the characters, while familiar, are also individuals, people that surprise us in small ways and that therefore seem more real than the characters in similar films. Daisies is also directed with a very sure hand by veteran Charles Walters and is blessed with a lovely cast. Doris Day turns in a perfectly tuned performance, never too heavy and never too light, and always appealing and believable. David Niven matches her step for step, and the supporting cast includes delightful turns by Richard Haydn, Jack Weston, and Spring Byington, and a devilishly dominating one by Janis Paige that is pretty sensational. Please Don't Eat the Daisies has its flaws, including a very extraneous musical number between Day and a group of children, but for the most part it's an engaging little film. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide