Saturday, August 29, 2009

Movies I've Missed (Until Now): Holiday


HOLIDAY has a lot in common with the better known THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, which was released two years later in 1940. Both films star Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, are based on plays by Philip Barry, and poke droll fun at the foibles of society’s upper crust. In HOLIDAY, Grant plays an up-and-coming young stockbroker who meets and falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy industrialist while they’re both on vacation in Lake Placid. They return to New York planning to get married, but first they have to introduce Grant to the family and get the approval of the girl’s father.

In a nice twist, Hepburn doesn’t play Grant’s fiancée but rather her sister. Grant’s character has some charming eccentricities, such as turning back flips when he’s happy, and it doesn’t take long for him and Hepburn’s character to realize that they’re kindred spirits. Meanwhile, another of Grant’s “oddities”, at least to his fiancée’s father, is that he wants to make enough money while he’s young so that he can retire and just enjoy life. When he says that he doesn’t want to make “too much money”, the industrialist just looks at him with a blank stare indicating that he can’t even grasp the concept of “too much money”.

The romantic triangle is kept pretty low-key for most of the movie, and while the script is more amusing than it is actually funny, there are a few laugh-out-loud moments. There are also some surprisingly dark moments for a romantic comedy, most of them provided by Lew Ayres as the industrialist’s alcoholic son who wants to escape from his father’s oppressive influence but can’t find the courage to do so. The rest of the supporting cast is very good, including the great Edward Everett Horton. (Probably very few members of my generation can hear Edward Everett Horton’s voice without thinking of “Fractured Fairy Tales” on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.)

HOLIDAY isn’t as good as THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, or for that matter, BRINGING UP BABY, the classic Grant/Hepburn screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks. However, it is a solidly entertaining film and well worth watching if you haven’t seen it before.

4 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Exactly my opinion.

beb said...

I thought you were going to review "High Society" the Frank Sinatra flick based on "The Philadelphia Story." That's been shown on TMC several times recently. I think Sinatra plays the Jimmy Stewart character and Fred Astaire the
Cary Grant role, though I could be wrong. I probable am since I would lose interest in the film within minutes. Grant and Hepburn really were in top form in "Bringing Up Baby."

Cap'n Bob said...

Horton also played Roaring Chicken on F Troop for a half dozen episodes. He was one of the great character actors of Hollywood's Golden Era.

Anonymous said...

It was really a nice classic romance comedy film. Thanks to this review I get some information that I need to know. I need to watch this classic film sooner or later. Again thanks to the article written about this Romance Comedy Film Holiday.