Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)

Subject: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:24 pm

This is not your typical Alfred Hitchcock movie. This has no crime, no horror, none of that. It's a romantic comedy which is not typical of Hitchcock at all. There's a reason he didn't make more romantic comedies - this wasn't all that good. Hitchcock said he wanted to make a movie with Carole Lombard and she was the queen of screwball comedies so this is what we end up with. This film is basically about Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They've been married for about three years and it turns out that they were married on the wrong side of a river so their marriage didn't count. She gets mad and he spends the entire film trying to win her back. The plot doesn't really seem plausible, but for a screwball comedy I guess that's what you'd expect.

The film stars Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard. They're kind of funny so there's nothing to really complain about on this end. I suppose the roles are demanding in their own sort of way since not anyone can do comedy.

I don't generally care for comedy since the emphasis tends to be on comedy rather than plot and acting unless very carefully done and that's the main fault here. As this film is rather old, it uses a different type of comedy than they'd use now, which is probably a good thing. There's no toilet humor or anything like that obviously - they couldn't do that even if they wanted to.

Also worth noting is the reaction people give when they find out that Mr. and Mrs. Smith aren't technically married. Nowadays people living together unmarried is no big deal at all, but in this film people are shocked that the two are together since they aren't married even though they thought they were for the last three years. The film is somewhat dated in that sense, but that's only a minor complaint.

This is regarded as one of Hitchcock's poorer American efforts and it shows. This isn't terrible, but it's not what Hitchcock does best and it's not something he ever really attempted again. Hitchcock can be quite funny in his other movies and in his TV show, but continuous comedy doesn't really work for him. This film isn't considered one of the better screwball comedies so it's probably worth seeing only for Hitchcock, Lombard, or Montgomery fans.

69/100
D+

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Wow, that's bad score.
That would be an F at my school.

Subject: Re: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) Thu Sep 25, 2008 2:35 am

bad score very bad score and ya at my score thats a high f