Daninger very weak, unfortunately

GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Art Vandelay Snoozy melodrama has two redeeming values -- The director repeatedly found a way to show Elizabeth Taylor barely dressed. Liz in full Technicolor negligees is probably worth 5 stars all on its own, frankly. At one point she looks in a full-length mirror and moans, ''I'll never be a size 10 again.'' Sadly, she was right. There's a bonus for fans of Young Frankenstein. About half way through The Last Time I Slept In Paris, who shows up but Eva Gabor with her turned-up nose, breathy lisp and - yes, after she changes for dinner - a blue taffeta dress. RIP Madeleine Kahn. Problem is shortly thereafter Liz and the inexplicably popular Van Johnson discover they're rich thanks to some oil wells and -- Liz hacks off her beautiful hair to resemble pixie Shirley MacLaine. Not that there's anything wrong with that when you're Shirley MacLaine, but why would Liz Taylor do so? So the producers could show the passage of time? Bad idea. Hack Van Johnson - filthy rich and married to Elixabeth Taylor - whines b/c publishers hate his writing. What an insufferable loser. Watch for Liz tearing a sheet of paper from Van's typewriter and seeing the nonsense he's written - shades of Jacko in The Shining. And lastly - holy smokes - Roger Moore was ridiculously good looking. Van Johnson might as well have just walked off the movie set right then and there.

TheLittleSongbird The Last Time I Saw Paris won't be everybody's cup of tea, but while it could have been much better I do not consider it a bad film. If anything it was an uneven but decent one. The ending did feel very forced and at odds with the mood of the rest of the film, there could have been more of a focus on the relationship between Helen and Charles, Van Johnson does start off a tad uncomfortable and his drunken argument with himself is pretty embarrassing and some of the film feels skimming the surface quality and lacking in depth with a dose of over-sentimentality. The film is also in serious need of a restoration, the faded, grainy print doesn't do it justice. But for all its flaws, The Last Time I Saw Paris has much to like and the good stuff is beautiful and charming indeed. The sets have a painterly charm and the Parisian location is irresistible(Paris has always been one of the most beautiful and romantic cities in the world, and couldn't have been a more perfect choice of location for this film) while the cinematography from Joseph Ruttenberg has a real intricacy, matching the mood and nostalgic atmosphere most fittingly, and Helen Rose's dresses are sumptuous in every sense of the word, especially Elizabeth Taylor's lavender dress which goes perfectly with her violet eyes. Conrad Salinger haunting and lush music score, a script despite the lack of depth that is intelligently, poignantly and wittily written- the car race is hilarious- and a story that has a fair amount of nostalgic charm and emotional resonance especially in the first half are also things to like. The direction is leisurely but not overly so, letting the film speak for itself, the characters are sympathetically drawn and likable although Charles is the only one who's really developed. And The Last Time I Saw Paris is also beautifully cast and beautifully played, especially by a luminous Elizabeth Taylor who brings sublime subtlety and nuances to her role an amusingly eccentric and endearingly roguish Walter Pidgeon. George Dolenz and Eva Gabor are also solid, Donna Reed is excellent in an atypical role and Sandy Descher proves herself to be an adorable child actress. Johnson may not start off well but the more interesting Charles gets the more comfortable and emotionally involved Johnson becomes, with his increasingly brooding, intense and affecting performance being one of the saving graces of the second half. Stylistically and tonally the film is true to F. Scott Fitzgerald's story Babylon Revisited despite the updating, but the story despite like the film having a weaker latter half had much more depth to the story and the characters more compelling in development and motivations. In conclusion, very flawed but also has a lot of charms, worth the watch. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox

writers_reign Here's the thing. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940. He published his first novel in 1920 and his last in 1934. In the twenties and early thirties he turned out some fifty or so short stories for which, initially, he earned top dollar but when his wife, Zelda, was diagnosed as schizophrenic and hospitalized he turned to the bottle and apart from a series of pot-boilers about a Hollywood hack named Pat Hobby and a series of essays, The Crack-Up, published in Esquire magazine around 1936, he produced little of any merit, albeit he was working on a novel when he died. He owed his success, particularly where short stories were concerned, to his gift of both understanding and interpreting the 'voice' of young people in the 'Jazz' Age. Bablyon Revisited is one such story dating from his peak years so the minute MGM chose to 'update' it to some thirteen or fourteen years AFTER his death its uniqueness i.e. the 'voice' of the Jazz Age, was totally destroyed. Even the central sequence, a flashback that begins in 1945 can't do much to help as that was still five years after Fitzgerald died. That being said it is, of course quite possible that movie buffs who couldn't care less about Fitzgerald would have checked this out on the strength of Elizabeth Taylor - who had grown up at MGM - Van Johnson, who had starred in several big-budget MGM movies in the forties and Walter Pigeon, who had likewise appeared in some top grossing MGM fodder (and had, ironically, just appeared in The Bad And The Beautiful, also from MGM which lifted a few rocks in the tide-pool that is Hollywood to reveal the unsavory marine life scrabbling around there). These people may well have come away content and serenely oblivious to Fitzgerald's ending, diametrically opposed to the one on offer here. The bad news is that even as I write the semi-amateur Baz Luhrman has got his claws into The Great Gatsby and is no doubt even now attempting to outdo the joke he entitled Moulin Rouge.

Cathie Browne One of the screens enduring story's of love sorrow and joy. of the post WWII era and it's aftermath on those who lived it. Charles (Van Johnson) returns to Paris to reminisce about the life he led in Paris after it was liberated. He worked on "Stars and Stripes" when he met Marion (Donna Reed) and Helen (Elizabeth Taylor). He would marry Helen and at first be happy staying in Paris after his discharge and working for a news organization. He would try to write his great novel, but that and too much of "the high life" would come between Charles, his wife and their young daughter as tragedy unfolds.Based upon the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, Babylon Revisited.