Only Two Can Play Reviews

Sort of a Welsh version of THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, this film takes some very funny turns as we watch Sellers in another of his deft characterizations. Sellers is one of the staff at a Welsh library in Swansea. He is bored with his wife, Maskell, annoyed at his children, angry at living in cramped quarters overseen by his dragon of a landlady, Edwards, and just fed up in general. He escapes mentally by dreaming of affairs with gorgeous women. One day, a gorgeous woman actually does walk into his blase existence and knocks him for a loop. This is Zetterling, the rich, sensuous wife of dull Huntley, one of the town's leading lights. She finds Sellers intriguing, and they plan to have a fling. The middle of the movie concerns their abortive attempts to consummate this passion--therein lies the comedy. In one slapstick scene, Zetterling talks Sellers into taking a car ride with her instead of going to the theater, preventing him from writing his newspaper review of the local stage production. She has a brand new automobile with all sorts of newfangled stuff on it, and he presses all the wrong buttons. They'd parked in a lonely field and thought they were totally alone, but along comes a cow peeking through the window. Then Huntley shows up. Sellers writes a review of the play he never saw, not knowing that the play didn't come off because the theater burned to the ground. His boss at the newspaper is enraged, but that's mitigated by Zetterling using her influence to get Sellers the job of head librarian. Meanwhile, Maskell has been having a casual flirtation with two-bit poet Attenborough. Sellers understands that if he takes the job he might be unable to do the little extra things he likes to do, so he says "Ta-ta" to the position and Zetterling and returns to Maskell. He will now run a mobile library that will keep him close to his wife and children. Anyone who has ever been in a dull marriage will recognize the reality of this funny movie. It never goes too far.