How to Murder Your Wife

1965

1h 58m

Comedy

List

64%

Tomatometer

14 Reviews

63%

Audience Score

2,500+ Ratings

Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon) is a successful cartoonist and happily single. That is, until, he gets drunk at a friend's bachelor party and impulsively proposes to the beautiful woman who pops out of the cake (Virna Lisi). Once sober, he regrets the decision, but she won't agree to a divorce. Stanley jokingly vents his frustrations in his comic strip by having the main character kill his wife. But when his actual wife goes missing and Stanley is arrested for her murder, he has a change of heart.

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TIME Magazine

A nimble comedy that doesn't make much sense because it makes nonsense, most of it screechingly funny and played by knockabouts who know that the slapstick was invented for keeping an idea aloft, not for beating it into the ground.

May 9, 2011

Full Review

Variety Staff

Variety

Finesse and desire aren't enough to overcome the fact that Axelrod's script doesn't make the most of its potentially antic situations.

Mar 26, 2009

Full Review

Bosley Crowther

New York Times

Believable or not, this stuff is funny just so long as one can go with the sour joke- -and that depends upon one's tolerance of trivia and also, perhaps, upon whether one is a fellow or a girl.

Rated: 3/5

May 9, 2005

Full Review

Dwight MacDonald

Esquire Magazine

In the screwball tradition, but the old shack has been redecorated with solid-mahogany furniture, plush drapes and wall-to-wall carpeting.

Aug 13, 2019

Full Review

TV Guide

This dated comedy is saved by Lemmon's comedic genius which eschews macho.

Rated: 3.5/4

May 9, 2011

Full Review

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

Rated: 2/5

Jun 11, 2005

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Steve D

Dark and NEVER amusing.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

04/15/24

Full Review

ed b

This is a very funny and very clever film that would not be made today. Brilliant acting, brilliant plot and Jack Lemmon and Terry Thomas just gel perfectly. Show this one to your kids for a good clean funny movie with no drugs and no profanity.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

farah r

It's hard to believe a film with such a premise that degrades women in every way was allowed to get made even back then. It's very offensive and unfunny.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Absolutely Hilarious!! Good-natured fun poked at the institution of marriage...but marriage wins the day. For those who can't handle its politically incorrect HUMOR, because finding it intolerably offensive; I'm sure there are many movies choices with mass killings, sadistic tortures and mutilations, sexual dubiety affirmations, and no feeling or heart...that you'll find more comforting and more in accord with modern values.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/02/23

Full Review

Ed M

Likable, but lightweight.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

11/25/21

Full Review

Audience Member

A dark comedy where all the charm and wit the film cheekily exhibits early on is completely undermined by the problematic moralising, and justification for misogyny, in the courtroom finale. At one point in the film a doctor explains to our main character, Stanley, (played by Jack Lemmon) that a pill he intends to use to drug his wife with will make a person be "brrrrrrup, right up the wall, and then - Blaaap! - right down again." That perfectly encaptures the experience I had watching this movie unfold.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

01/27/23

Full Review

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Richard Quine

Director

Jack Lemmon

Stanley Ford

Virna Lisi

Mrs. Ford

Terry-Thomas

Charles

Eddie Mayehoff

Harold Lampson

Claire Trevor

Edna

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Synopsis

Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon) is a successful cartoonist and happily single. That is, until, he gets drunk at a friend's bachelor party and impulsively proposes to the beautiful woman who pops out of the cake (Virna Lisi). Once sober, he regrets the decision, but she won't agree to a divorce. Stanley jokingly vents his frustrations in his comic strip by having the main character kill his wife. But when his actual wife goes missing and Stanley is arrested for her murder, he has a change of heart.

Director: Richard Quine
Producer: George Axelrod
Screenwriter: George Axelrod
Production Co: Murder Inc.
Genre: Comedy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Sep 28, 2009
Runtime: 1h 58m

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