Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

weezeralfalfa This is a potentially interesting topic, with an all-star cast, largely wasted in a screenplay that's too dispersed, with too little humor. I regard this film as essentially an anthology of little dramas, some with a measure of comedic content. I suspect probably 3 couples rather than 5, would be optimal in the time given.Reviewer dejimd points out that lack of a legal marriage license doesn't necessarily mean that, legally, a couple is not considered married. Thus, the apparently difficult position of Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor in regard to her pregnancy is not as serious as they had feared. On the other hand, gold-digging Zsa Zsa need not have fainted when she received the notice that her marriage certificate was invalid because the justice of peace that married them was new and not legally able to perform marriage ceremonies for another week. It's perhaps surprising that the bickering couple played by Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers decide to undergo a legally valid marriage ceremony. My guess is that they made sure they were legally married because their jobs at the radio station depended on their being married to each other.The Paul Douglas and Eva Arden couple seemed bored with each other, with no baby to provide a common interest. I wouldn't be surprised if they had rejected a shoring up of the legality of their marriage. I suspect they may have bowed to inertia, in hopes their relationship would eventually get better. The David Wayne & Marylyn Monroe pair look to have a short-term economic strategy, with David serving as the stay-at-home babysitter, while she is traveling around competing in beauty contests. I correctly guessed that they would renew their marriage ceremony.Of course, we wouldn't expect Louis Calhern to agree to make his marriage with gold-digging Zsa Zsa look any more valid.In conclusion, being as how the premise that the common problem of these 5 couples is that they are not legally married is suspect, and the supposed humor is minimal, I can't recommend this film, unless you have a star actor you want to see.

jarrodmcdonald-1 Are you ready for it? Here it comes! Married folks learn their weddings were not exactly legal. Yes, it's true!There are quite a few complications in this clever romp from 20th Century Fox. Screenwriter Nunnally Johnson has created a masterpiece and come up with a smart way to subvert the production code. In the story, he presents a vast array of characters that have received the benefit of marriage without actually having been hitched. In one couple's case, they already have a child! At least most of the couples on screen want to stay married/get married again. Which is more than most of the couples who probably are watching this movie.

Richard Burin We're Not Married (Edmund Goulding, 1952) is a series of star-studded short stories that's at its best when it's being sweet - not cynical. While its structure recalls If I Had a Million, which gave each of its main characters $1m to spank on the ventures of their choice, the story is reminiscent of Hitchcock's impressively tedious screwball comedy, Mr and Mrs Smith. Victor Moore sets the plot in motion as an over-eager, though slow-speaking, justice of the peace who starts marrying people before his licence permits. When the error is uncovered a couple of years later, five marriages are struck out, with the explanatory letters arriving at some critical juncture, giving the couples the chance to stick or twist.As with perhaps my favourite anthology, Night on Earth, we start with the weakest story. The 'Glad Gladwyns', radio DJs Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers, are luvvy-duvvy on the air, bicker in the office and don't speak at home. Their story is mostly predictable and mostly miserable, stuffed with those leaden barbs that cinema enjoyed aiming at its rival medium during this period (see also: A Letter to Three Wives, It's Always Fair Weather) - including a string of audio adverts that seem to go on forever. Hmm. Anyway, onwards and upwards... The second chapter compensates by being pretty darn great: if you can imagine a good version of Lady Godiva Rides Again, made in America and lasting about 10 minutes - then it's like that. Marilyn Monroe is the reigning Mrs Mississippi, gunning for the regional beauty queen crown until she gets that letter, rendering her ineligible. David Wayne is in good form as her stay-at-home husband, changing nappies and avoiding sarky remarks from the postman until his trump card arrives. There are a couple of fantastic jokes in this one, which has a modern sense of humour along with its very '50s trappings, and buzzes with an energy most of the other segments don't possess.Paul Douglas and Eve Arden are the next couple: again we're on slightly bleak ground, with the husband's motive for staying put leaving a sour taste - quite aside from not being that funny. Better, if no less cheery, is part four, in which multi-millionaire Louis Calhern is given the run-around by canny 'wife' Zsa Zsa Gabor, only to find a most unexpected escape route. The scene in which Calhern is framed by his partner's cohorts is funny, but we're ultimately asked to root for a bland if trusting financial weasel who's put a third of his money in secret accounts. Admittedly his wife is even more objectionable than he is. Happily, the movie saves its best for last, with a comic and moving segment reminiscent of star Eddie Bracken's collaborations with Preston Sturges - if lacking the touch of genius associated with that director. Bracken plays a soldier who's about to sail for overseas when he finds out that the baby he's expecting is going to be born out of wedlock. So he calls for his girl to join him and goes AWOL, dodging the Military Police as he tries to get hitched. It's madcap, in an agreeable way, with Bracken ideally cast as the eternally unlucky, put-upon little guy trying to do the right thing. There's also a small part for Lee Marvin, playing Bracken's army buddy. Finally, we get a brief coda giving a delayed wrap-up to the Rogers-Allen sequence that possesses more charm than the whole of the earlier chapter, and providing a fitting finale for Douglas and Arden. It's not a great film, but two of the five segments work really well and there's enough star power for the others to just about skirt by.

blanche-2 Back in the '50s, a common sitcom episode was the married couple finding out that they're not legally married."We're Not Married," a 1952 film, has five such couples, including Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe and David Wayne, Eve Arden and Paul Douglas, Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor, and Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor.There were several episodic, anthology-type films from this period. "We're Not Married" deals with five very different couples and what the notice of non-marriage means to each couple. There's a wealthy man (Calhern) married to a gold digger (Gabor), a bickering husband and wife radio couple (Allen and Rogers), a couple in a slump (Paul Douglas and Eve Arden), an ambitious young woman and her husband (Monroe and Wayne) etc.The best is the Calhern-Gabor, and Allen and Rogers make a good team and give bright performances. There are some funny sequences throughout.Mores have changed a lot since this film, but it makes for pleasant watching with good direction by Edmund Goulding.