Made For Each Other

I usually cut a lot of slack for these movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s, but this one just got my goat. It reminded me of a much superior film also starring Jimmy Stewart, It’s a Wonderful Life, but doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence. Jimmy and Carol Lombard meet and get married in 24 hours. Even I found myself agreeing with his boss and his mother that this was a trifle hasty … for a little while, anyway. He’s a struggling young attorney trying to make partner in a law firm. His boss, Judge Doolittle (the great Charles Coburn) doesn’t see it that way, and promotes an incompetent over him. The couple have a baby, and Carol gets tired of hearing hubby complain about how he’s not getting anywhere, and advises him to stand up for himself! And boy, did I agree with her. The boss is an asshole, and the mother, who lives with them, criticizes literally everything Carol does, and he won’t grow a pair of balls and stand up to either of them.

It’s all just so damn predictable. I knew from the moment they boarded the Normandie for a honeymoon to Europe that they’d be called back so he could handle a big case. I knew that, like George Bailey from Bedford Falls, they would never get to Europe. I even knew that when he came back from drowning his sorrows in booze, he would drop the milk bottle he was drinking from.

Then the kid gets sick. The only thing that can save him is a rare serum that’s only available in Salt Lake City, 2,000 miles from New York. But there’s a blizzard in Mormontown, and only an insane man would fly in that weather! Needless to say, an insane man is found, but seems to be lost over the Rockies. Carol is despairing, and right on cue a nun pops up and says there is one thing she can still do. Pray. I hate that! The whole idea that God answers one person’s prayer and right down the hall, ignores the prayer of another, is one of the most awful things I can think of. It means “I am God’s favorite! I am better than you, whose baby died!” I don’t know how a good Christian can even entertain the thought, and yet these people even pray to win a football game!

And suddenly, when they need help, the boss and the mother become stalwart, loving, good Samaritans, and I didn’t buy that for a fucking minute, either. All in all, this movie just sucks.