THE FORM DIVINE

A feminine comedy that does not stoop to farce or cheap humor (although its strivings for smartness sometimes tries too hard) this reports the Battle of the Bulge in believable, amusing and pertinent terms. Lucilla Webb, whose ""modest trickle of anxiety"" moves over into the free flowing category when she lunches with an old college classmate, is a pushover for the Beautiful You School, where she, as a Bony (rather than a Bulgie) gets a different course than the other students. That her family -- very nice husband, an 8 year old daughter. Sniffles, the spaniel, Gretel, her maid, and even their apartment on West 10th Street, suffer during her exposure to falsies, rouging her brain, dancing pores, the divine angle, the secret garden of beauty (which closes the bathroom to everyone else) is as nothing as she the yearns for the higher things with the only male instructor. That she gets out of that, and turns into a human being through her friendship with her fellow students, and crosses her heart and hopes to die to be a better wife, mother and lady of the house, ties this up neatly -- and attractively. A surprise package which takes the intangible, female glamour yearnings in a sympathetic Hokinson touch, to which is added a bit from Mr. and Mrs. North -- and, as a crazy lead-on, a leer from Harpo Marx... Fun.