Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

MartinHafer Back when it debuted, I am pretty sure that "Under the Yum Yum Tree" made a bit of a splash with its plot that was strongly infused with sex. However, despite the novelty of the story, the film, down deep, just isn't very good. Mostly it's due to the writing--as the characters are more like caricatures and are very, very difficult to believe. As a result, I found it an absolute chore to watch this movie.The film is set in an apartment complex run by a creepy guy (Jack Lemmon). I am sure back in 1963, he was seen as a great comic character by the filmmakers. However, today he really comes off as a guy you'd expect to see registering as a sex offender--he was THAT creepy. A young engaged (Carol Lynley and Dean Jones) move in together. She sees it as a great experiment to see if they are compatible--he sees it as Purgatory, as this is supposed to be a sex-less experiment. Throughout their stay, their nosy landlord keeps dropping by to either offer Jones unneeded advice or to try to score with Linley. However, neither one seems to understand the true nature of Lemmon's attention--he is neither helpful nor innocent but a perv who thinks of nothing but sex 24-7.The sad fact is none of the people in the film are the least bit believable or likable. Lynley is an oblivious idiot who talks and talks about modern love and relationships but she obviously knows nothing. She speaks in platitudes and faux intellectualism so much that she sounds more like a comic book character than a real woman. Jones is a bundle of sexual tension and nothing more--and his character is given no opportunity to be any more. And, as for Lemmon, well, I have already talked about how he's just super-creepy.By the way, the IMDb summary describes Lemmon as a "love-struck landlord"! This is NOT at all accurate. Love is not what he's interested--the guy is a sex offender. He likes to climb on windows to peek at his female residents--hoping to see them naked. This is not what I'd call love-struck!! Overall, the film tries very hard to be adult and edgy--pushing the 'new morality'. However, instead of making you think or being clever, it just comes off as badly written. All the characters are unlikable and plastic and the film never engages.By the way, I sure found it surprising to see Dean Jones in a movie like this considering his squeaky clean image and promotion of family values. It just didn't seem to fit in this case.

bkoganbing I'm sure that the reason Jack Lemmon was cast in the screen version of Under the Yum Yum Tree was the resemblance of his character of the landlord Hogan here with the part that got him his first Oscar, Ensign Frank Pulver in Mister Roberts. Superficially there is a resemblance.But the womanizing frat boy gone to sea in Mister Roberts is behaving under acceptable standards. It's kind of expected that men act out their sexual fantasies being deprived of it when on sea duty. Those stories about sailors on shore leave aren't an exaggeration. In Under the Yum Yum Tree it's as though Frank Pulver was left an inheritance of an apartment building which is obviously strategically located near a co-ed campus. What was acceptable behavior for Lemmon in Mister Roberts is unbelievable in this situation. Try as he might Lemmon cannot make this character likable. He's a rich guy who never worked a day in his life which apparently is devoted to being a peeping tom in regard to all the beautiful young women he rents to. And he only rents to young women. When you think about it, it's pretty darn scary. I can't believe one of these girls hasn't called the police on him.On Broadway the play was a five character thing and only Dean Jones came over from Broadway. Lemmon, Carol Lynley's part, and Edie Adams part were taken by Gig Young, Sandra Church, and Nan Martin. Under the Yum Yum Tree had a respectable run of 173 performances on Broadway.But if this is what the theater audience saw, how did it run so long?

Poseidon-3 Films certainly underwent some massive changes during the 60's. Compare the "chaste" sex comedy of this 1963 movie with the far more permissive and blatant movies of the latter part of the decade. Lemmon plays a relentless, lascivious skirt-chaser who runs an apartment complex called Centaur Apartments. Renting only to women, he says goodbye to former flame Adams and, before he can adjust to it, has rented the vacant apartment to her pert and very attractive niece Lynley. Lemmon can barely contain his glee as he sets out to carve yet another notch on his figurative bedpost, but he's unaware that Lynley has arranged for her boyfriend Jones to live with her (platonically) as well as part of an experimental, pre-marital arrangement! While Lynley and Jones wrestle with their hormones and strive to shield each other from temptation, Lemmon peers through windows and hangs from the roof when he isn't just trotting right through the front door with one of his many, many keys. The goings-on are observed by Lynde, as an envious gardener, and Coca, as his disapproving, cleaning-lady wife. Plenty of predictable misunderstandings and shenanigans take place with opposing sides either vigilantly defending Lynley's virginity or trying to get it taken away. All of it is handled with a soft touch through suggestiveness, innuendo or comedy. Lemmon tackles a very unusual role for him and is at least partially successful with it. He outrageously skulks around like Wile E. Coyote, with a battery of tricks up his sleeve, while appropriately cartoonish music plays. His antics eventually grow tiresome and he overacts with abandon, but it's still fascinating to see him in this light. Lynley was probably never more beautiful than in this film and, most of the time, she's quite appealing. She handles a stock "liberal, progressive virgin" role with skill. Jones (impossibly skinny, especially during the seduction scene towards the end) is charming and endearingly lunkheaded. He and Lynley make a very nice couple. Adams is saddled with a fretful role, but she looks pretty nice and manages a few nice moments. Handsome Lansing, as her new fiancé, has a very thankless part (one which was not in the original Broadway play on which this is based.) Coca is afforded several amusing bits as is Lynde, but Lynde was capable of far more hilarious screen activity than he's allowed to show here. Some of the material was just a tad obvious and tired, even for 1963. The film would have benefited well from a little bit of pruning in the redundant dialogue and more lengthy sequences. Still, it's a very colorful, silly, wacky romp that, if nothing else, makes for a fascinating time capsule of what filmmakers of the era thought (or perhaps wanted audiences to think) was the right way for people to behave. The sets are quite amazing, actually, though patently artificial-looking at all times. The opening credits for the film are really bizarre with a big fake tree hovering over two dancers as James Darren croons the title song. It's amazing how similar Darren sounds to the much later Harry Connick Jr. Incidentally, among Lynley's belongings in the apartment is a Darren LP! Bixby appears briefly as a potential male tenant, given the brush-off by Lemmon. A few years later, Ryan O'Neal, Leigh Taylor-Young and Harold Gould would film a pilot movie intended to set this up as a series, but it didn't come to fruition.

JasparLamarCrabb It could be argued that this paper thin sex comedy aspires to recall Billy Wilder's work (and the casting of Jack Lemmon may very well bear that thought out), but it's really closer to other glossy '60s romps like LOVER COME BACK and MOVE OVER DARLING. Lemmon's terrific as an apartment house landlord who fancies himself a real ladies man...actually, he likes them coed young! His latest prey is Carol Lynley, who's engaged to Dean Jones. Shenanighans ensue! It's silly, at times stupid, but still fairly engaging. The cast is fun with Lemmon having a particularly good time. Edie Adams appears as Lynley's aunt and Paul Lynde plays a very envious super...with a wife named Dorkus(!?!). She's played by none other than Imogene Coca. This is one of several comedies Lemmon carried during the early and mid-sixties...he made the equally light GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM and HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE around the same time.