1938 - You Can't Take It With You

And here we go!  It's Oscar time!

The Oscars came about in 1928, and we've been handing out little gold men with reckless abandon ever since.  There were a couple years where the awards were combined, but we are still looking at 80+ movies.  Watch the films in order, you say?  Well, I've put a good deal of thought into this, and have come up with a profoundly accurate way of reviewing the "Best Picture" Oscar winners.  I've plugged them into my Netflix queue in completely random fashion, and we will review them as they show up.

I won't be rating them with a number as we did in last year's blog - so I'll go with a recommendation of "Gotta See It," "See It If You Want," and "Don't Bother."

So, we are starting tonight with the winner for 1938 - "You Can't Take It With You".  Our summary, courtesy of Netflix:

"In this Frank Capra classic, Tony (James Stewart) and Alice (Jean Arthur) meet and fall in love.  But things are far from rosy:  he's the son of a millionaire, and she and her wacky family live in a house that's in the way of the senior Kirby's construction project.  Will an office building literally stand in the way of true love?  The movie, adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, delivers the answer."

Wake the kids and phone the neighbors.  In my expansive career as a movie search hound/reviewer, I've made a scientific discovery, such has not been seen since the apple fell on Newton's head.  I have determined that there are, in fact, two different types of time.  One is " theoretical running time".  Netflix tells you this number, so that you may know how long the film will last.  The other is "actual running time",  which is how much time you FEEL has passed while watching the movie.

In this particular case, the "theoretical running time" is 2 hours, 6 minutes.  The "actual running time" is 14 hours, 38 minutes.  I swear to allah, this was the longest flippin' movie I've ever seen.   I actually got up not one, not two, but FOUR times to check the time counter on the DVD player to see HOW MUCH FRICKIN' LONGER I had to watch this.

Best Picture, 1938?  Wow.  What a cinematic desert 1938 must have been.  The incredibly sad part was watching James Stewart just standing around, leaning in doorways and looking either amused or downtrodden for the bulk of his screen time.  What a waste of the man I have always considered to be the perfect actor.

I say, Don't See It.  I wish us better luck next time.