I watched The Art of Love on my newly-repaired DVD player last night. I liked it but nowhere near as much as I did when I saw it in a theater in 1965. The story is a little too contrived and the romantic twists of which characters fall in love with each other felt very "written" to me and unnatural. Dick Van Dyke and James Garner play two "friends" and I put that word in quotes because they don't treat each other very well in this film.
Also, it was a bit of stretch to cast Elke Sommer — who in '65 was 25 years old and one of the most beautiful women on the screen — as a young lady who was despondent because she couldn't find a man to love her. If I was a young woman back then watching this, I would have said to myself, "Wow! If no man wants her, what hope is there for the rest of us?"
But there are some very funny scenes and it's always a joy to watch Mr. Van Dyke move and stumble and trip and just act with his whole rubbery body. So I really can't dislike it but 68-year-old me didn't enjoy it as much as 13-year-old me did.
A few weeks ago, I re-watched The Thrill of it All, which was made two years earlier at the same studio (Universal) with the same director (Norman Jewison) and another script by Carl Reiner, and again with James Garner, in this case with Doris Day. It was a better entry in the lightweight screwball comedy category, meaning that the story was totally illogical and silly but it somehow didn't matter. You can order The Art of Love if you like but if you're in the mood for James Garner in that kind of thing, buy The Thrill of it All.
The odd thing is that while they're both written by Carl Reiner and he's in them both, The Thrill of it All feels more like an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show than The Art of Love even though The Art of Love actually has Dick Van Dyke in it. Go figure.