Word: spoil
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...French Antarctic expedition, and Disney's cartoon version of Peter and the Wolf. The life of the penguin is not so gripping as that of the lion, but the brief presentation is charming. The cartooning in the latter picture is good, but wonkie adaptation and commentary will spoil it for most who remember Prokofieff's creation with any affection...
...SUNKEN GARDEN, by Douglass Wallop (254 pp.; Norton; $3.50), spins this sudsy question in the novelistic washer: Will the seven-year itch spoil the successful marriage of Tom Forester, boy adman? Author Wallop is noted for his 1954 crystal-gazing novel, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (later the hit musical Damn Yankees), in which he showed how the Devil, with an assist from a Washington Senator outfielder, could raise hob in a baseball stadium; now he shows how the devil in the flesh complicates family life in the Madison Avenue...
...false-premise logic and steal the headlines by explosive charges of warmongering. Last week he seemed sadly hampered by the new rules imposed by the Spirit of Geneva. The relaxation it had produced in Europe was serving the Kremlin well, and Molotov was apparently under strict orders not to spoil this pleasant atmosphere...
...slack method. The comic pace often gets so slow that the moviegoer realizes he is, after all, at a funeral. The actors, too, sometimes behave pretty much like pallbearers, but the central idea is of such wormy charm that it takes more than an hour and a half to spoil...
...playwriting, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? often badly slithers; and as satire, it is too often a mere family joke. More surprisingly, the sap in Playwright Axelrod's spoofing suddenly turns to syrup. Kidding the blonde siren at the start, Will Success offers a lowdown but lively Monroe Doctrine; championing the playwright at the end, it provides a weirdly solemn Declaration of Independence. (By this time, in Hollywood plays, integrity should be seen and not heard.) And in all the final putting things to rights, there is no trace of irony. If Hollywood filmed Faust, Faust might be expected...