Month: April 2019

First Light aka At First Light (2018)

First Light aka At First Light (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) I’m of at least two minds about First Light — If you want to be nice about it, it’s a competent low-budget film that manages to create a convincing atmosphere. If you’re not as nice, it’s a threadbare story with no point nor conclusion. So how do we reconcile this? Let’s start with the obvious, which is to say that it’s a film about a first contact scenario between humans and non-humans, sparked by a teenage girl discovering new powers after being saved from drowning by mysterious lights. It doesn’t start badly, as it features economically challenged characters in a gritty atmosphere, having to deal with new and strange powers. There are echoes of Chronicle in there, even as it seems to be putting together alien contact Science Fiction with superhero fantasy without too much care as to how these things go together. There are strong whiffs of YA teen movie clichés as well, which seems overly restrictive when a slightly different approach would have been more universal. The problems with First Light grow bigger as it goes on: it quickly starts feeling overlong, dull in its increasing lack of originality, unambitious in how it does not develop its characters, derivative in that it seems to embrace more and more clichés along the way. By the time the third act is done, writer-director Jason Stone rehashed conspiracy theories and fumbled the ball at the climax, leading to a big “… and then?” in lieu of a conclusion. It’s maddening to see such empty substance handled this well. First Light is a reminder that “low-budget filmmaking” doesn’t always mean what it used to—thanks to technology, we can have inexpensive aerial cinematography (such as drone shots looking at the action from above, suggesting an otherworldly perspective) and seamless special effects. Alas, those aren’t substitutes for a hollow story: while the film occasionally feels like a smarter-than-usual take on a familiar scenario, it’s depressingly unoriginal at the final tally. It’s a shame it couldn’t be as adventurous and disciplined throughout—as it stands, First Light leaves the door too open to a sequel, making us wish we’d seen it instead.

Nothing but Trouble (1991)

Nothing but Trouble (1991)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) If you’re curious to know what would happen if you mixed Silent Hill with gross-out dumb comedy, then have a look at Nothing but Trouble … but heed this: It’s not going to make you happy. This so-called horror comedy follows Chevy Chase and Demi Moore as they make their way from their comfortable upper-class Manhattan penthouse to the depths of rural New Jersey where they will be tormented by murderous hillbillies led by the local hanging judge. The film’s execution is meant to be comic (with a lot of fake screaming, cultivated grotesqueries and a series of dumb sketches strung along) but the effect is more puzzling and dreadful than funny. The only sequence worth highlighting as being tolerable features Digital Underground and a few party girls bringing some welcome urbanity back in the film—but then the same sequence features Dan Aykroyd’s worst tendencies in having him join the song with a piano bit. Landing the blame at Aykroyd’s feet is only natural given that he’s the film writer, director and producer, in addition of holding two on-screen roles—with a smattering of other Aykroyd family members in the supporting cast list. Nothing but Trouble definitely reflects a personal comic sensibility trying to find a happy middle ground between horror and comedy, but doesn’t succeed at even mastering one or the other—at best, the film settles for a series of disgusted yucks and blank stares at what it thinks is funny. There’s a waste of John Candy (in dual roles, one of them in drag), the overuse of Chevy Chase (now known to have been as unpleasant behind the scenes as his reputation suggests), and not a whole lot to do for Demi Moore. The set design is good, though—it’s a shame that it couldn’t have been used for anything better. I suspect that the film has aged slightly better than upon its reception, if only because it features a few familiar names in earlier roles, because there’s now an even bigger glut of hellbilly horror movies that it could be seen as parodying and because today’s audiences may be more familiar now with genre hybridization. On the other hand, there’s been many better horror/comedy hybrids since 1991, and the limits of Nothing but Trouble are now even more apparent.

Flesh and the Devil (1926)

Flesh and the Devil (1926)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) As much as I love exploring what Classic Hollywood has to offer, it’s not because a film is old and still remembered that it’s good. While Flesh and the Devil is still noteworthy today for being one of Greta Garbo’s Hollywood breakout roles (and was selected for the National Film Registry), it remains a particularly melodramatic silent drama and those often age badly. The premise has to do with a love triangle between a woman and two friends, with plenty of complications. I didn’t like it all that much. Some of it has to do with the nature of silent dramas—the pacing is mortally slow, the overacting can get tiresome even by the standards of the day, and the underpinning of the drama is nothing like today. But some of it is specific to the choices made by Flesh and the Devil as well: the melodrama is overdone and Garbo’s character is portrayed as purely a temptress with little personality of her own. This dismissive portrait of the female lead, combined to a relationship between the two friends that would work better if they were brothers or even homosexual lovers, leads to an incredibly cruel bros-before-hoes climax that will leave modern viewers dumbfounded. I know, I know—cinema at that time was a heroic endeavor, and that it actually pulls off something that we can appreciate today is in itself a miracle. Still, well, blah.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) As far as early-sound era movie adaptations of theatrical material go, there’s a lot to like in The Barretts of Wimpole Street. It combines the best aspects of films at the time (actors, setting) with the traditional strengths of theatre (strong sustained drama, good dialogue) for a result that has held up rather well. Norma Shearer is fine as the film’s heroine, inspired from real events, but it’s Charles Laughton who steals the show as a reprehensibly overprotective father. Coming in right at the edge between Pre-Code filmmaking and the constraints of the Production Code, the necessity of bending the film to the censorship adds a layer of mystery to the film’s final moments that would have been blunted by a more direct approach, as we must wonder if the villain has really said that what we think he meant. (Spoiler: he totally did—Laughton even boasted about “the gleam in my eye.”)  I can find plenty of faults with The Barretts of Wimpole Street (such as the lack of interest in the eight [!] other kids and its detour into romance-upon-romance) but I can’t really argue with the final results. Amusingly enough, the film may have been nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, but its enduring claim to fame was being one of the films that inspired the famous HICKS NIX STIX FLIX Variety headline.

Parenthood (1989)

Parenthood (1989)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) At first, Parenthood looks like your usual middle-of-the-road Steve Martin comedy, with enough silliness and hijinks to cover up a lack of thematic intentions. Much like Cheaper by the Dozen, in fact. But as Parenthood develops, it gains a significant amount of sentiment and profundity as a multifaceted exploration of parenthood from toddlers to, well, far older kids. There’s quite a bit of Martin silliness (including a rather triumphant sequence as a fake cowboy that finally gets the character to earn a win after a film designed to undercut him at each instance) but it’s all in the service of larger interests. You can see the deeper themes at play in the film’s very entertaining daydream sequences, two of them contrasting extremes of fatherhood success. But it’s not all laughter as the film touches upon some dramatic material even as it’s designed as a comedy—parental anxiety is a real thing. With an ensemble cast but a stronger more interconnected plot than many episodic films, Parenthood steadily gains steam throughout its run. It helps when it knocks holes to deepen its initially-stock characters, such as when a teenage Keanu Reeves delivers sage advice to a young and nearly unrecognizable Joaquin Phoenix. Mary Steenburgen is as lovely as ever, while Dianne West delivers an Oscar-nominated performance. All told, Parenthood delivers more than what you could expect from later-era Steve Martin comedies—it’s occasionally silly for sure, but it does deliver on more nuanced material as well.

Trader Horn (1931)

Trader Horn (1931)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Movies were something else in 1931, and Trader Horn is a tour through everything that has changed since then. Whether you want to talk about the film’s wobbling technical quality, its blatant exposition, simplistic plot or colonialist tendencies, there’s a lot of material for discussion here. I imagine that at the time, the chief appeal of the film was primarily as a way to see Africa and its wildlife on the big screen, from lions to giraffes all identified through a mildly hilarious travelogue sequence that doesn’t even attempt to hide its wide-eyed nature (even commenting upon how it’s not that unusual to see that many animals all close together). I also imagine that shooting the film on location was unimaginably difficult, explaining both the lush location and the disjointed editing of the result when there’s no time or resources to get it perfectly the first time. (Oh wow: checking its Wikipedia article, I see that it was not only the first non-documentary film shot in Africa, but a substantial portion of the cast and crew —including director W.S. Van Dyke—fell ill and a few actually died of various mishaps during filming.)  What’s left is a piece of history, but perhaps not a very pleasant one: the depiction of the native tribe is straight-up from the Victorian colonialism period, even though it’s not quite as offensive as I was dreading. Still, this is a film about white explorers discovering picturesque Africa, and no cliché is left unturned, including the white princess to be brought back to civilization. (Edwina Booth looks fantastic in the role, but she paid for it by falling gravely ill for years following the film’s production and never became the superstar that her performance suggested.)  Trader Horn is, in most respects, a rough watch: thematically, technically, and creatively, it shows its era’s limits more often than not. But I still found it unexpectedly compelling even though there are much more enjoyable movies from its time. This is one case where it’s probably better to read about the film’s extraordinary production history before watching, in order to best appreciate the labour that it represented.

Fame (1980)

Fame (1980)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) One of the least-appreciated revolutions in twenty-first century filmmaking is the viability of TV miniseries as a storytelling format. Suddenly, creative projects that make sense over a lengthy duration can become long-form binge viewing, leaving movies to focus on tighter, more focused stories. Fame cries out for the miniseries treatment: Featuring an ensemble cast of teenagers going through four years of creative arts high school, it simply packs too much in two hours and feels as if it barely gets any chance to develop its dramatic arcs, strike a coherent tone or let its characters breathe a moment. Director Alan Parker gets to play with a lot of different storytelling devices, from initial auditions to an impromptu musical number (and another, more diegetic one) to stand-up performing to sex comedy hijinks to a classical music concert, alongside more dramatic moments. To be fair, Fame does have its share of interest and quirks: Taking place in a school focused on performing arts means that the film can transition from one scene to the other through the device of characters rehearsing dramatic pieces, meaning that you quickly learn not to trust anything on-screen until a few moments have passed. The Rocky Horror Picture Show screening scene is a lot of fun, and there’s a genuinely funny stand-up routine in there. There’s also more nudity than expected. The actors aren’t bad (Irene Cara, Paul MacCrane and Gene Anthony Ray being particular standouts) and they are given some meaty material to play… but the script often leaves them badly served by depriving them of a climax or a complete character arc. Four years and a dozen characters can’t be stuffed in two hours without everyone feeling cheated of a satisfying story. It doesn’t help that the tone of the film is all over the place, from comedy to musical sing-alongs to big tragic monologues and dramatic character moments—such shifts are manageable within the context of an eight-hour miniseries, but they stick out in a film. I still like watching Fame for its moments, but I remain dubious about it overall. In movie history, it exists as a footnote (it was MGM’s last musical before its merger with UA), and a transitional point from seventies grittiness leading to the music video aesthetics of the 1980s.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) There are plenty of good reasons to watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but one of the best has to be able to drop “You know, Alfred Hitchcock once did a screwball comedy” in conversation knowing fully well what you’re talking about. Bonus points given for the incredulousness of convincing people that the 1941 Mr. & Mrs. Smith has nothing to do with the 2005 spy-versus-spy action comedy even though you would think that Hitchcock would have been a good fit for that kind of material. No, this version of Mr. & Mrs. Smith is about a happily arguing couple that goes through a crisis of un-marriage, romantically bickering in fine screwball comedy fashion until they make up at the end. It feels very similar to other “comedies of remarriage” of the time (allowing the thrill of quasi-adultery without actually having adultery in the eyes of the Production Code) although that comes with a caveat for twenty-first century viewers: Even if the banter is equally distributed between female and male protagonists, the film clearly plays on very 1940s assumptions about gender roles and contrivances. Today’s viewers almost have to be trained to get over some of the material in order to enjoy the rest of it. If you can get past that hurdle, it’s quite a bit of fun: Carole Lombard is quite good here in one of her last films before her untimely death, while Robert Montgomery is a good foil throughout it all. The likable look at upper-class New Yorkers in their apartment, offices and privileged romantic squabbles is very much in-line with the rest of the screwball comedy genre. It’s not always convincing, though (even if you accept its contrivances), and the conclusion is a bit abrupt, but it’s not as if the reconciliation wasn’t already a forgone thing. Mr. & Mrs. Smith is goofy fun, though, and that’s more than you’d expect from Hitchcock.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Everyone has their own irrational film dislikes, and one of mine is 1978’s Heaven can Wait, in which a lunk-headed football player is given another chance at life. It’s a manipulative, insulting piece of nonsense that doesn’t even work on a scene-to-scene level and one of my questions in approaching its original inspiration Here Comes Mr. Jordan was whether those flaws were inherent in the concept, or specific to the remake. (This seems as good a time as any to point out that 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan was remade as Heaven can Wait [1978], even if there was a different—and much better- 1943 film called Heaven can Wait. But that’s not all! Here Comes Mr. Jordan had a sequel in 1947 called Down to Earth, which was also the title of a third 2011 Hollywood remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan. All of these can trace their origin to a 1938 theatrical play called Heaven can Wait but originally titled It Was Like This. If you’re not confused, it’s because I haven’t included a diagram.)  The best thing I can say about the original is that it’s not quite as irritating as the remake. Robert Montgomery plays a boxer sent to heaven too soon, and then sent back to earth in another body.  The titular Mr. Jordan has the good luck of being played by Claude Rains, with Evelyn Keyes as the love interest.  But it’s still irritating: The protagonist is still an idiot, and the film still becomes ludicrous in its attempt to make an unsatisfying concept work. I understand the need to underscore unusual premises by clearly explaining to the audience, in triplicate, what’s happening—but a common failing of both versions is to dumb things down so much that the protagonist’s idiocy becomes grating and pile on one arbitrary rule on top of another until they don’t really matter anymore because angels. Speaking of which, there are much better angel movies—going from It’s a Wonderful Life to Here Comes Mr. Jordan feels like a downgrade. Or maybe I just don’t like the very idea of these films.

Once Were Warriors (1994)

Once Were Warriors (1994)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, April 2019) There’s a good reason why Once Were Warriors remains a landmark of New Zealand cinema even twenty-five years later: It’s a harsh -at times unbearable—film, but it makes a few fundamental points about cultural disconnection and how social policy failures can have real, personal, and violent impacts. The story revolves around a Maori couple that leaves their village to go live in Auckland, but (eighteen years later) find themselves in desperate circumstances with the father of the family unemployed and alcoholic, his rage often manifesting itself in physical violence against his wife. Tough but compelling, it’s a film that hasn’t really aged, and remains relevant well outside New Zealand—as a Canadian, it’s impossible to watch the film and not feel the social indictment of government policies (some of them well-meaning, other decidedly less so) that end up separating First Nation people from their culture. It’s only, suggests the film, by reconnecting to traditions that there is hope. Once Were Warriors is extremely difficult to watch: the very realistic scenes of domestic violence are infuriating and nausea-inducing at once, with even worse material coming up later on. I’m impressed at how director Lee Tamahori was able to make a film that’s expressionistic and realist at once, combining impressive cinematic sequences with very humble moment showing familiar patterns of broken promises, commonplace abuse, casual use of violence and aimless lives. With all due respects to Rena Owen who plays the anchor of the story, this is Temuera Morrison’s film: he embodies charm and violence in a character that’s as magnetic as repellent. The film does have a strange relationship with violence, though—one of Once Were Warriors’ final scenes has a villain getting a much-deserved comeuppance, and now we’re cheering for the blows to land hard. Still, there’s a lot to digest in terms of themes and wider implications: it’s fast paced, seldom boring and some good visuals along the way. You will seldom see a film as hard to watch yet compelling and even admirable.

The Great Outdoors (1988)

The Great Outdoors (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, April 2019) When I say that The Great Outdoors is about taking a trip, it’s not necessarily in the way reflected by the plot of the film. Yes, sure, it’s superficially about two brothers and their families spending a week at a lake cabin, and the various tensions between the brothers playing themselves out. But in more significant ways to twenty-first century viewers, The Great Outdoors is a trip back in time, to an era with a very specific aesthetic when it comes to dumb comedies. Written by John Hughes, directed by Howard Deutch, starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd, you can clearly associate the film with the mainstream of mid-to-late-1980s American comedies. For anyone on a steady diet of more modern films, it’s a different experience watching a dumb 1980s comedy, with its painfully obvious plotting, shot dumb gags and abandoned emotional arcs. (I’m not saying modern movies are smarter—but the stylistic conventions are different.)  But dumb 1980s films can be reasonably fun, so if you can tolerate the expected gags and predictable third-act plot developments, the end result isn’t too bad—especially considering how The Great Outdoors does a lot of mileage on Candy and Aykroyd’s pure comic talents, with Candy as a goofy dad and Aykroyd as a fast-talking urbanite. (Meanwhile, Annette Bening’s screen debut here is probably an early shame considering her later body of work.)  There are a few things I really liked—notably the use of “Yakety Yak” at the beginning of the film, and the very funny scenes featuring subtitled raccoon talk. The Great Outdoors is not a great film, but it does have an amiable quality to it: if nothing else, it’s not mean-spirited at all in showing some heartwarming family moments.

United we Fan (2018)

United we Fan (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) One of the consequences of having so many outlets for film in this streaming era has been the rise of the niche documentary. With comparatively lower production costs and an insatiable appetite for content (not to mention the clickbait potential for some documentary topics compared to fiction), there are more documentaries than ever on ever-specialized topics. (And if you happen to be a Canadian Cable TV network looking for Canadian content to meet your CRTC license broadcast requirements, Canadian-produced documentaries are a bonus.)  So that partially explains United we Fan, a Canadian documentary using examples of fan campaigns to save TV shows (starting with Bjo Trimble’s letter-writing campaign that got Star Trek its third season), as a springboard through which to talk about organized fan movements and, much more generally, fannish behaviour in the modern media landscape. Writer-director Michael Sparaga packages the result as an inspiring power-to-the-people kind of film, highlighting how it allows communities to connect, to take direct action beyond watching a show and talking about it, even allow people to realize their personal potential through organization, communication, and so on. (It doesn’t take much for the film to make the link between saving TV shows and social justice to which I’m thinking: Hmmm.)  Many of the interviews are with fans convinced of their self-righteousness, critics/commentators bolstering the film’s claims, and grateful creators/actors of fan-revived shows who know better than to be anything less than grateful to the fans. But as someone with fandom experience dating back to the mid-1990s, I’m curiously ambivalent about the United we Fan documentary—While the film does a good job at presenting and exploring its subject matter, it’s curiously curt about some second-order implications of fan devotion. To put it simply, there’s an entire commercial aspect to “saving TV shows” or other fannish obsession in support to lucrative interests that doesn’t get a lot of discussion here—for all of the nuts sent to a TV network to save Jericho, it’s still consumption in service of consumption, serving the interests of others. If you want inspiring stories of fans achieving more, take a look at those who transformed an interest in consuming media to producing media. But that doesn’t quite have the hook of Star Trek and other TV shows, right? As someone who spent time in the fannish trenches (most notably for Babylon-5), I’ve gone there and back—I’m more interested in critical explorations of how fan energy is co-opted as yet another marketing tactic in service of corporate interests. It annoys me that I have to ignore that dimension and clap along at another self-serving fannish documentary in a growing list of uncritical, superficial essays. But that may also be another lesson in approaching documentaries in general—they may be cheaper to produce than scripted dramas, but they still take time and effort, and it’s not clear if anyone would invest so much in criticizing actions that feel good in a limited perspective, but prove problematic in a wider context. All documentaries are trying to convince you of something, even if that something can be a carefully channelled “rebellion” that results in bigger profits for someone else.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Upon its release in theatres, Crazy Rich Asian was widely hailed by its publicists as a turning point in Hollywood history; the first studio-led big-budget film featuring an almost entirely Asian cast, heralding a new landmark for mainstream cinema inclusivity. I remember not quite getting the fuss, having seen a whole lot of Kong-Kong pictures, being able to cite precedents all the way to the admittedly problematic Flower Drum Song, and having tracked China’s growing influence over Hollywood throughout the 2010s. But of course, it’s different. No amount of bringing up The Joy Luck Club or Better Luck Tomorrow actually lessens Crazy Rich Asians’ achievement as a box-office and cultural success. But here’s a lot to unpack here, from the nagging feeling that this is another nail in America’s global dominance to the cross-cultural appeal of well-worn romantic comedy tropes, most notably the crazy wish fulfillment of marrying into a rich family. It’s great to see Michelle Yeoh back in a leading role as the family’s matriarch—she’s perfect for the role. The film is remarkably warm and funny, gradually easing American audiences into the titular craziness through a variety of western-educated viewpoint characters. Constance Hu headlines and does well, but Awkwafina steals every scene she has as a crazy Westernized friend who proves to be the protagonist’s sole reliable ally. You can argue that Crazy Rich Asians uses well-worn plot elements and merely dresses them up in new surroundings, but that’s the entire point of the exercise. Much of the film’s sheer sense of fun and accessibility can be attributed to John M. Chu’s excellent job directing, as he snappily brings together the experience he gathered while directing previous musical comedies and big-budget action blockbusters into something immediately compelling. He is certainly an efficient filmmaker—for a film about crazy rich Asians, the film does manage to put a lot of money on-screen, one of the set pieces being one of the most memorable wedding scenes in recent memory. No matter my qualms about the film’s publicity and meaning, I enjoyed it thoroughly. In fact, Crazy Rich Asians is so much fun that I was sorry to see it end so soon. Sequels? I’ll be there.

Crossfire (1947)

Crossfire (1947)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) 1947 was an interesting year when it comes to social-issues drama films at the Academy Awards. Two films in nomination for the Best Picture Oscar were squarely about antisemitism—a bold statement at the time. One of them, the serious and finely controlled major studio picture Gentleman’s Agreement, won the award. But it’s the other, Crossfire, that clearly exceeded expectations. A production of a major studio (RKO) but clearly intended as a B-movie in the disreputable crime thriller genre (now identified as a film noir), the picture went beyond its strict murder-and-investigation formula by tying it to a sensitive social issue—the victim having been the victim of an antisemitic hate crime. (Tellingly enough, the film is based on a novel where the victim was homosexual rather than Jewish.)  It is, in many ways, more overly hard-hitting than Gentleman’s Agreement—the price to pay for discrimination being death rather than social ostracism. Its execution may be less refined, but it’s well in the norms for a film noir—a darkly-lit tale of murder and the investigation to find not only the killer, but his motive. Crossfire is merely one in a long line of crime dramas being used to illustrate deeper issues, but it has the distinction of being the first to punch through the Academy’s prejudice against genre films to earn a handful of nominations. It’s still quite watchable today even if you don’t care about the historical context: Robert Mitchum stars as a police detective, making the film just a bit better every time he’s on-screen. Director Edward Dmytryk keeps things moving through a tight 86-minute running time, delivering a very satisfying film that exceeds noir motifs to deliver a stark and still relevant discussion of hate-fuelled murder. You may watch Gentleman’s Agreement and find that it has aged poorly in its well-mannered depiction of prejudice, but Crossfire will still grab you by the throat.

Penny Serenade (1941)

Penny Serenade (1941)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) I didn’t think it was possible to dislike a Cary Grant film, but here I am, looking at Penny Serenade. Oh, it’s not virulent hatred, nor wall-to-wall dislike. It’s just … not that enjoyable. Part of it has to be that in trying to show the first few years of a marriage, the film becomes an episodic melodrama, meant to make people sob and then rebuild them back into happiness even if it doesn’t quite make sense. It could have worked had it been executed well, but it’s not: instead, there’s a jerky-jerky rhythm to the plot that stops and goes and throws in tragedy instead of plot development and then caps it off with a cheap resolution that doesn’t actually resolve anything. Some of the early moments showing the courtship between our male lead (Grant, in a role with more serious moments and emotional range than many of his other roles—he was nominated for an Oscar for it) and our female lead (the beautiful Irene Dunne, at ease playing Grant’s on-screen wife for the third time but limited by a very traditional script) base their courtship on vinyl records. But the cavalcade of misery that awaits our characters at every turn gets increasingly ludicrous. Raking my brain for a way to make it make sense, the best I came up with was having a secondary character (played by Beulah Bondi) being an actually supernatural fairy godmother—at that point, Penny Serenade makes some kind of plotting sense rather than a collection of drama. Alas, I’m sure that this wasn’t the intended meaning of this melodrama. Unfortunately, that means that the ending (in which a new baby is meant to make everything all right) is hollow and unconvincing: It feels as if Penny Serenade had lasted twenty more minutes, the new kid would have died, some other tragedy would have tested our protagonist (place your bets on WW2!) and we’d be back at the starting point with yet another kid on the way. There are a few good moments along the way—and a few good bits of direction from George Stevens, as ham-fisted and obvious as they may seem to us. But Penny Serenade was never meant to be an audacious film—it’s old-school Hollywood mawkishness, and it’s not unusual that it would feel too broad, too on-the-nose for twenty-first century audiences.