BEFORE: Last night was my first beer dinner of 2014 - I had not been to one since September, but that's sort of expected as restaurants tend to get busy with the fall holidays, and beer dinners sort of get put on the back-burner. But it was great to get back into the almost-monthly pattern with a Mardi Gras dinner (early, I know, but the brewery was based in New Orleans) that included lobster and andouille jambalaya, a porchetta muffaletta with provolone and olive salad, and a turducken nugget with sriracha maple syrup on a hoecake. Oh, and beignets and banana pudding for dessert. Throw in 5 beers and a flaming Dr. Pepper shot, and you've got yourself a party.
Moving on from "His Girl Friday", and I swear I did not plan this, it's just another one of those things, a character actor named Billy Gilbert carries over. He played the bumbling messenger from the Governor in last night's film, and tonight he plays a European waiter. He's one of those guys who has a ton of credits because he could do a great reaction "take". You can almost hear the casting director saying, "Get me that guy who can roll his eyes in that funny way!"
THE PLOT: A runaway bride and an undercover reporter get caught up in political intrigue as they lead a merry chase across Europe and uncover a spy plot.
AFTER: This is another one of those screwball comedies that tries to throw everything into the mix - the thrill of being a reporter, international espionage, and a love story to boot. But I think the problem comes when you try to do too many things, you're not concentrating on any ONE thing. The couple falls in love merely because they've spent so much time together - I'm not really seeing what attracts him to her, or vice versa. This reporter acts a lot like Cary Grant's character in "His Girl Friday" - he's a liar, a cheat, he knows a lot of questionable people, and he'll do or say anything or betray anyone for the sake of a story.
The spy plot is really sketchy here as well. OK, we get that the Baron and Baroness are disreputable spies - but for whom? They want the map, but why? What is it a map of? Do we ever find out? How do you know this is a hot story for the newspapers if you don't know what their plan is? They could be trying to corner the international cheese market for all I know, and the map gives the locations of the best cheese shops in Paris. This made the whole film seem sort of half-written.
If anything, the film reminds me of "Midnight Run", where an experienced slick bounty hunter is trying to get cross country with a clueless guy, and there's a rival bounty hunter who keeps getting misled and fooled along the way. The rival reporter here falls for our star reporter's bull time and time again, to the point where I couldn't believe that anyone could be so foolish so many times in succession.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the newspaper is running the story of our heroes, even predicting that they'll fall in love while on the road together, and then when the news isn't coming fast enough, it of course means that the editor has to scream at everyone in the newsroom. Either being a news editor in the 1930's was a tough gig, or they just motivated their staff by screaming at them all the time.
Also starring Clark Gable (last seen in "Gone With the Wind"), Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Reginald Owen, William Demarest (last seen in "Sullivan's Travels"), Donald Meek.
RATING: 4 out of 10 heads of cabbage
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