Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Lover Come Back Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 30, 2016

Note: This film is available as part of the Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection.

Despite their reputation as the “it” couple of late 50s and early 60s romantic comedies, it’s perhaps surprising to note that Doris Day and Rock Hudson actually only made three feature films together, the trio assembled in Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection. Pillow Talk (which was released as a standalone Blu-ray in 2012 as a Digibook and then again almost exactly a year later in this edition) was one of the most overwhelming box office sensations of its era, ending up with an Academy Award for Best Screenplay and several other nominations (including, rather incredibly, the sole nomination for Best Actress that Doris Day received over her long and varied career). The film world moved slower back then, and it took a little over two years for a follow up of sorts to appear in the form of Lover Come Back, a film which pretty much simply retold large swaths of Pillow Talk’s tale of bickering folks who can’t see the clear truth that they’re actually madly in love with each other. Lover Come Back wasn’t anywhere near the smash that Pillow Talk had been, but it still raked in considerable dough and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. Three years after the second pairing of Hudson and Day, their final film together, Send Me No Flowers, came out. This one departed rather radically from the precedent set by the first two films, with Hudson and Day not contentious singles but instead a seemingly happily married couple who then get entangled in a farcical set of circumstances due to the Hudson character’s incipient hypochondria.

It turns out that Peggy Olsen was not in fact the groundbreaker she was portrayed as being in Mad Men: The Complete Collection, or at least not the only one. Exhibit A in this thesis might well be one Carol Templeton (Doris Day), who is some kind of quasi-executive or at least account manager at a tony Madison Avenue advertising agency circa 1961 (which in fact is a bit before Peggy really started climbing the corporate ladder). Carol is a no nonsense sort who is always immaculately dressed (and coiffed, of course), and who delegates authority with elan, telling her acolytes somewhat vaguely to “develop this” as she reviews prospective ad campaigns. Carol is hot to trot to secure the account of a floor wax marketed by a southern good ol’ boy named J. Paxton Miller (Jack Oakie, in his final film), but she’s thwarted by the similar attempts of Jerry Webster (Rock Hudson), a hard drinking and partying lothario who is an ace at a rival advertising firm.

Lover Come Back takes a page out of Pillow Talk’s set up when Hudson’s character assumes an alter ego in order to wine and dine Day’s character. In this case, he pretends to be a scientist named Linus Tyler (who is actually played by the great Jack Kruschen), a chemist who has been hired to quickly develop a nonexistent product that Jerry pretended did exist and actually shot some commercials for, in an attempt to wine and dine another woman, a rather pulchritudinous chorus girl named Rebel Davis (Edie Adams). The product is named VIP (pronounced phonetically, not as an acronym, even though it’s always capitalized), which once the “real” Dr. Tyler invents it, turns out to be a highly intoxicating candy.

Already the farcical building blocks are firmly in play, with some expert befuddlement added courtesy of supporting player Tony Randall (as the owner of the ad agency where Hudson works). Adams is also wonderful as the sweet if none too bright chorus girl suddenly thrust into overnight stardom courtesy of her appearance in VIP commercials. That said, Lover Come Back never really works up the same ebullience as Pillow Talk did, nor does it skew advertising culture as sharply as even another Day vehicle, The Thrill of It All, did in 1963. There are certainly laughs to be had throughout Lover Come Back, and the film is surprisingly risquée at times, but there’s a feeling that the film is simply going through its Pillow Talk paces without clearly establishing its own identity (a kind of ironic element, given both films’ emphases on alter egos).

Lover Come Back Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Lover Come Back is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This "middle" film of the three Day-Hudson pairings also falls in the middle video quality wise. It's not at the generally excellent levels of Pillow Talk, but it doesn't have quite as many issues as Send Me No Flowers does. Elements are obviously aged, with typical signs of wear and tear. The palette has faded, though perhaps a little weirdly more toward a kind of peach color than the typical brown one tends to see. That slightly skews the entire color spectrum, leaving some of the film's nice production design looking "off" at times. Still, given a bit of slack cutting in this regard, things pop reasonably well, and detail levels are generally acceptable to commendable, especially in close-ups. The film only temporarily engages in the split screen antics of Pillow Talk, and opticals like that are understandably softer and grittier looking. The typical bane of older Universal catalog releases, namely aggressive noise reduction, is not on display here, and there's a healthy grain field in evidence throughout the presentation. There are occasional signs of what look like minimal sharpening, but they're never at really problematic levels.

Lover Come Back Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Lover Come Back features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track which encounters a few stumbles along the way, typically in musical moments. There's some recurrent changes in reverb that almost sound like phasing in Day's warbling of the title tune, and another musical moment later has a bit of the same anomaly, though not to the same degree. Dialogue fares better, but the track sounds fairly narrow and shallow a lot of the time, with a somewhat boxy ambience. All of this said, there's really no overly problematic damage and there's no problem in hearing anything at any time.

Lover Come Back Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2:32)

Note: This is an "old school" Universal disc which boots right to the film. The "menu" (such as it is) is accessed with the Pop Up Menu button on your remote.

Lover Come Back Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Lover Come Back simply can't quite escape the looming shadow of Pillow Talk, though it's more than obvious that no one associated with the film really wants to. The performances are bright and brisk, and the film provides its fair share of laughs, but it often feels like a "do over" that never quite does enough to erase the memory of the iconic first pairing of Day and Hudson. Technical merits are good to very good, though there's room for improvement in both the video and audio departments. Recommended.