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Bookmark this pageYou Can't Take It With You (1938)
Director: Frank Capra
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
How true that is. And how revealing. Capra is at his most sentimental here, with James Stewart, the son of a munitions tycoon, falling for dizzy Jean Arthur, who comes from a poor but happy family of eccentrics. There are fireworks when the two fathers meet, but mostly the picture is a damp squib, trite, preachy, and desperately sincere. If the poor were a vocal minority, this would be denounced as the equivalent of Uncle Tom-ism. The cast is appealing, particularly Stewart and Arthur, but it's not enough. Polly Wolly Doodle indeed.Author: BC
User reviews of this film
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- Denis said...
- Posted on Dec 14 2011 15:37 Perhaps audiences of the Great Depression were less concerned with plausibility but 80 years on I find the sentimentality more than a little off-putting, not to mention the family's Pavlovian droolings at the prospect of social elevation. There is also the black couple who seem to be part of the furniture despite their status as domestic servants but do not get to eat at the main table.
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- Alan said...
- Posted on May 12 2011 13:56 They're not a poor family. They're the family of someone who was wealthy enough to support a family for thirty-five years with only one member who works (the granddaughter Alice). This is just the tip of the implausibility and incoherence iceberg of the story.
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Cast & crew
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Cast: Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Spring Byington, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson full cast
Duration: 127 mins
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