Set mainly in a bawdy-house that is never in the least bawdy, Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce is the kind of fantasy much favoured by Hollywood -- a sex comedy from which sex has been carefully eradicated.

Though Irma's 143-minute length is more than a little too much of a very good thing, it's hard to dislike a movie that keeps giving you more good stuff.

Lemmon and Maclaine fail to reproduce the chemistry from The Apartment but this slight film is not as ignorable as reputation suggests.

Billy Wilder is a great director and you can't find too many actress es better than Shirley MacLaine, so when Jack Lemmon appears on the screen, the triple-treat is complete.