His Girl Friday (1940): Fast-Paced Script but Few Laughs

I'm of two minds about His Girl Friday.  One the one hand, I didn't find it funny and it's a comedy.  Of course, this movie puts me at a question of: Would I find any 1940s comedy funny?  I've been trying to watch older movies for a while now, and I don't think I've ever chosen a comedy.  Sure, some of them have humor in them, but they're not really outright comedies.

Basically, I couldn't tell if this film wasn't funny, if it's comedic pieces just haven't translated to a person in the 21st century, or if it is funny to some but not to me.  I don't judge a comedy based on the laughs I get from it, but I usually judge whether it's funny or not by that standard.  And I didn't really laugh throughout the movie.  Hence my first point.

On the other hand, I can acknowledge that this is probably one of the most deeply-packed, clever scripts of any movie.  It reminds me of Aaron Sorkin in more ways than one: he's a writer who has deeply-packed, fast-paced scripts that I acknowledge are good, but for some reason I just am not a fan of his.  (Well there's plenty of reasons actually)

The two leads are well-cast and the rest of the cast seems able to catch up to the demands of the script.  Sometimes - it happens less often now - but sometimes I'll catch a movie with a person who use to be a star and I've never heard of them.  Well, I'll watch one of their movies and then I'll wonder why this is the first time I've ever seen them.  That's Rosalind Russell for me.  She's somewhat of a revelation for me and I intend to seek out more of her movies in the future.  And Cary Grant is well Cary Grant.

I think the biggest hurdle for me was that I wasn't all that interested in the murderer or that subplot.  Which is kind of a major part of the movie.  I'm all for its annihilation of the news agency.  I'm also surprised at how well the premise of the movie - a man tries to stop his ex-wife from remarrying - works.  I know hoary plots didn't always use to be that way, but you'd still expect you'd get tired of it.  But the script just blazes on, telling you to forgot about that, now we have a new scene going on and you better pay attention.  (If there's one thing I can say, it's that this movie demands all 91 minutes of your attention.)

Side note: Did this movie actually say that Bruce Baldwin "looks like that actor Ralph Bellamy" - who by the way was the actor who played Bruce.  I'm guessing this was extremely original in 1940, but it took me out of the scene completely.

3/4 stars