Fake-adventurer and author Reggie Blake (Terry-Thomas) returns from a journey to Arabia a changed man, dressed as a Bedouin and telling his wife Fran (Janette Scott) to keep her place. He’s also given up on his adventure books and wants to publish his pompous, semi-religious tract. His publisher (Wilfrid Hyde-White) has little interest in his new book, and less in his new abrasive personality. To strike back, Fran beings to write a biography of her husband.
Battle of the sexes comedies were common in the ‘60s, and His and Hers follows the general structure. The man is more than commonly sexist and obnoxious for the time and pushes until the woman decides to fight back. He is stupid and jealous, and she is brighter though equally jealous. Things become farcical and degenerate rabidly into absurdity. How well specific examples work depends on the trade-off between sold jokes and annoyance. His and Hers certainly has funny moments, and it is often annoying.
Strangely after making the audience thoroughly hate Reggie and sympathize with Fran, and elevating the level of absurdity to epic proportions, it pulls back. We even leave the main characters for some common at-the-time beatnik bashing. After having put up with Reggie’s horrible behavior for so long, we need some kind of payoff—I did anyway—but there isn’t one. This is a battle of the sexes comedy that just calls off the battle.
Janette Scott is lovely; I wish she’d done more of these comedies. Terry-Thomas is one of the greats—probably the greatest of the second generation Post-War British Comedians. He specialized in cads of one sort or another and could make them a lot of fun. But they didn’t have enough to work with. It feels as if they started without a finished script and then when it ran out, just ad libbed a quick ending. None of the three writers had experience in these sorts of comedies nor did any of them go on to illustrious careers and the director worked almost exclusively in drama. Giving this even a 2 star rating is being overly generous, but the actors are worth that.
Janette Scott was also in the Post-War British Comedies Happy Is the Bride (1958) and School for Scoundrels (1960) and the Post-Apocalyptic The Day of the Triffids (1963).
Terry-Thomas’s other Post-War British Comedies are Private’s Progress (1956), The Green Man (1956), Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s (1957), Brothers in Law (1957), Lucky Jim (1957), The Naked Truth (1957), Happy Is the Bride (1958), I’m All Right Jack (1959), Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959), Too Many Crooks (1959), Make Mine Mink (1960), and School for Scoundrels (1960).