I am really grateful for the support you all have shown me about this new venture, and it has manifested itself in different ways. In this instance, my wonderful cousin Julie wanted to give me two of her favorite movies of all-time for me to watch at my convenience. Today was our family Christmas party (oddly post-holidays this year) that was held at Julie's lovely home and we got to talking about some of her favorite movies and I promised I'd watch them. Thanks for the suggestions, Julie!
She was concerned about how I'd feel about her choices, but as it turns out, she wasn't quite aware of my love of old movies, Cary Grant, and witty banter in old-time screwball comedies. Score one point for her first selection, her favorite: The Awful Truth starring the inimitable Cary Grant and the lovely Irene Dunne.
I think I'm going to try this stream-of-consciousness writing more often when I can.
The leads play a married couple who decide to get a divorce since they don't trust each other not to be seeing other people on the side. (Gotta love these screwball comedy plots. 10 bucks says they get back together in the end.)
Like a lot of these great movies, the main characters are both witty and have perfected their repartée with each other.
They've named their dog "Mr. Smith". Weird. Apparently, "custody" of the dog is one of the primary devices for conflict in the movie. I guess I understand? By the way, Dunne gets custody of the dog by showing him his toy furtively.
An old woman just used the term "rebound" to describe the first person one strikes any sort of interest in after a relationship fails. I guess that term's been around a lot longer than I thought.
This new guy that Irene Dunne is seeing is a real Southern bumpkin, and in this scene he calls to mind the line from Ben Folds's "Zak and Sara" that goes "...pills that put you in a lovely trance that makes it possible for all white boys to dance..." It's about the funniest thing ever, behind probably Elaine's full-body-dry-heave-set-to-music.
Okay, this man she's found is quite the catch. Yikes! He's from Oklahoma, first of all. And he just playfully slapped the hell out of her upper arm. And he's a terrible singer.
Huh. Physical comedy manifested in Cary Grant doing a near-cartwheel. That whole scene looked awkward. And now he just fell out of a chair, which was actually funny.
Okay, so there's a contrived mixup with a pair of hats that are almost exactly identical, but it's hysterical toward the end, especially when Cary swats at one. I laughed out loud.
"A man's best friend is his mother." Did we just put Psycho in? Watch out, Irene, he's gonna kill you!
Stupid montage of Jerry and his new heiress cum love interest having fun. Does anybody actually have a job? Of course, this directly coincides with the day the divorce proceedings are going to end.
Yet another line that reminds me of another movie: "You go your way and I'll go mine." Barbra Streisand also says this to Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly, a musical I'd rather always see in person than watch the movie, no matter how much I like the film. I think a part of it is the fact that they took "The Motherhood March" out of the movie, which is both a fantastically funny song, and the blocking for the scene is great.
The mother of the fiancée looks a lot like Rex Harrison's (Henry Higgins) mother from My Fair Lady, looks like I'm about to IMdB it. Ooooh, she's the wife from You Can't Take It with You. Not even close, but now I recognize her.
Okay, so the movie has reached its inevitable pinnacle of absurdity. Now it's just a matter of time until they realize how perfect they are for each other. As in all movies of this kind, there's only about five minutes left. Better wrap it up nice and neat and pleasant-like so that everyone will be happy.
Well lookee that, that door opened up all by itself! Three minutes left, folks.
That clock, again? Why?
For crying out loud no one's thinking that maybe they will, maybe they won't. We all know. Two minutes.
You should really use the chair. Irene, you kind of look like a ho when you make that face.
And again with that damn clock. Cleeeeeeever.
--------MOVIE ENDS---------
Witty, mostly well-paced, well-directed (Leo McCarey won the Best Director Oscar for it), and you have to love the leads. This could have been a far-worse movie, though I feel like I've seen this movie several times before with only slight variations in plot. You can try to be It Happened One Night all you want, but you probably won't quite succeed.
Score: 7/10
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