This isn’t quite what I expected. It’s a weepie — and I can just imagine what Douglas Sirk would have done with this material.

It’s not that this is bad or anything, but it’s frustrating.

Cary Grant as an irresponsible spendthrift somehow doesn’t work, and that’s just weird. Irene Dunne is great.

But then it turns into a screwballish comedy!

It’s funny… but it kinda turns into a How To Raise A Baby movie? It’s just odd.

Penny Serenade. George Stevens. 1941. ⚃

Well, this certainly has a lot of names…

Edward Everett Horton! Mah favourite!

Yeah, it’s the usual reaction to Cary Grant.

Grant only started acting a couple years earlier, but had already done a bewildering number of movies:

Can’t blame the producers.

This is so, so, so close to being a screwball comedy classic. The plot zings, the characters are perfect, they’re all hamming it up to eleven…

But it’s just slightly staid? Not the plot or anything, but the directing and the editing? There’s scenes here where I’m going NO! PUT THE CAMERA OVER THERE SO WE CAN SEE THE (PROBABLY) HILARIOUS REACTION SHOT! And CUT HALF A SECOND AND THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECT!

I’ve never seen a movie where it’s so clear what the technical problems are — it’s so frustrating.

It’s delightful, but it’s frustrating.

But, I mean, it is very funny.

Ladies Should Listen. Frank Tuttle. 1934. ⚄

This is the third Topper movie. The first two were quite tightly intertwined… but this one is basically just Topper on a new, random adventure with some new ghosts.

This is amusing, but it’s so random.

Topper Returns. Roy Del Ruth. 1941. ⚃