On Y List of Movie Reviews

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You Can't Take It with You (1938)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 8/25

8/25: Recently, I looked up any Best Picture winner that I hadn't yet seen which left me with a dozen to work on.

One of them was You Can't Take It with You. I had never heard of the film in my life. Oddly, it was directed by Frank Capra and featured James Stewart, Jean Arthur, and Lionel Barrymore. I knew there must be a typical Capra-esque arc to the story. Nonetheless, I started the film with eagerness and...slept thirty minutes into it.

All I can say is: boring, boring, boring. It's a forced hodgepodge type of movie involving half-retards and snobs. How does the former group make money to maintain their living expenses with a huge number of people with servants in that mansion? And nobody in the neighborhood heard the fireworks for the longest time? The story is rarely focused. When it is, that's due to a few strong scenes with Lionel Barrymore.

While watching the film, I thought of It's a Wonderful Life and how much better it was. There was clarity from start to finish in a dramatic manner to teach life lessons. The other one is rather sloppy in reaching a moral that's ultimately artificial. I didn't even believe James Stewart's character having been born into a snobbish family given his "oh shucks" behavior. At the same time, there are some unintended racism and stereotypes by the way black people are used as servants and how the Russian (who the hell is he anyway?) is portrayed.

All in all, You Can't Take It with You is a badly dated Capra-corn picture.

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