Surrender Reviews

A frothy comedy that harks back to the days when Doris Day snappily protected her presumed virginity back in the 1950s, SURRENDER brings that hoary plot into the 1980s and manages to evoke a number of good belly laughs along the way. Daisy Morgan (Sally Field) is an artist who makes a meager living turning out motel art on an assembly line. While at a museum cocktail party, Daisy and the other guests are forced to undress and then are tied together by some machine gun-carrying criminals. Daisy happens to be tied up with Sean Stein (Michael Caine), a successful mystery novelist who is paying so much alimony and palimony that he is terrified of women. It's a sure bet that they'll wind up as a duo. But fearing that Daisy may be another woman who wants to leave him emotionally and financially drained, Sean pretends to be a starving writer. Writer-director Jerry Belson takes the easy way out a few too many times. He feels obligated to toss in jokes where there should be none and visual gags where they are out of order. Yet SURRENDER is, for the most part, a neat romantic comedy for people above the age of acne and heavy metal.