Without the Depression looming in the background, Screwball Comedies lost the dramatic ballast needed to detonate the laughs. A seesaw act with no counterweight, unmoored in the rise of WWII prosperity.* That said, this little number from director Sam Wood, is a reasonable facsimile of the form if you can blink your way past its strained setup. Claudette Colbert, who all but started Screwball in THREE-CORNERED MOON/’33, is happily married to MidWest exec Dick Foran, a butter-and-egg man whose main fault is getting starry-eyed & playing second-fiddle to old college pal/world-famous foreign correspondent Don Ameche. Now, after years of Ameche crises throwing wrenches into their plans, Colbert’s finally going to meet the great man only to wind up bailing him out yet again. This time by masquerading as his wife at Foran’s insistence! It’s just for a day, play along and he’ll follow them into NYC and sort it all out. Wacky misunderstandings to ensue. Some of this is nearly funny, or at least has the shape of comedy. One nice touch lets Foran partially in on Claudette’s deceitful act, so he doesn’t have to go thru the jealousy routine. He’s good, too, a career best for Foran. Not bad, but the genre was starting to look tired . . . and tiresome.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: *Preston Sturges usual gets credit for keeping the form going during the war years, but his films aren’t so much Screwball as sui generis Sturges. See him with Colbert on hand for one of his peaks, THE PALM BEACH STORY/’42. OR: For true Colbert/Ameche enchantment, MIDNIGHT/’39, from an early Billy Wilder script.
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