Watching I Was A Male War Bride, I realize how delicate the line is between a screwball comedy working and not working. It's really no surprise they went out of style. Not because there's no demand for a good screwball comedy, but because they are incredibly hard to pull off.
A screwball comedy has two things that are directly against how you normally make a movie. The first is that you need to figure out how to force the plot into zany situations without making it obvious that's what you're doing behind-the-scenes. Normally, in a movie, you write where the plot takes you, but with a screwball comedy, you're specifically forcing characters into wacko situations in a way that probably wouldn't naturally develop from your writing.
Secondly, you actually need to create believable characters who are probably going to behave irrationally in order to make the plot work. Plot is derived from characters after all. His Girl Friday is a perfect storm because the characters are why it's a screwball comedy - their world operates at a fast speed and everyone else is expected to keep up. But the newspaper world is not how everyone operates.
Anyway, in case you didn't pick up on it, I think I Was A Male War Bride fails as a screwball comedy. In the first half of the movie, a lot of the comedy is just so, so forced. The train is still moving when the operator lifts up the boom barrier which defeats the whole purpose of the boom barrier. Cary Grant climbs up a sign to read it which exactly zero people would ever do. A child starts the motorcycle with a completely and inexplicably unaware Grant in the sidecar not realizing there's no one driving for an absurd amount of time.
But Gabe, this is a screwball comedy. This is what happens in them. If the gags are well set up, I accept these situations. These gags are just incredibly forced, which only makes me realized how forced they are and I don't find them funny.
And for what it's worth, I wasn't disliking the movie up to this point either. I was getting some strong It Happened One Night vibes from the first half of the movie. And then, the writers realized "oh wait this movie relies on these two wanting to get married" and they forgot to, you know, set it up at all.
The movie did two things successfully. They showed them antagonistic towards each other and you believably thought they would get over that and eventually get together by the end. But the writers skipped a step in the process. Because the way it plays, Ann Sheridan very randomly decides she loves him. Like there needed to be a step between them being playfully antagonistic towards each other and them loving each other.
I compared it to It Happened One Night for a reason. The first half of this movie is pretty similar to the structure of that movie, only It Happened One Night still had the entire 2nd half of the movie for them to realize they love each other. Like I said, it's like the writers realized "oh wait, we're not just copying that movie, we need to make him a war bride now."
It does not help that this is my least favorite Cary Grant performance so far. It's Cary Grant, so the bar is high, but unfortunately for him, I'm comparing him to other Cary Grant performances, not typical leading man, so I was actually disappointed. It seemed like he wasn't that interested in this movie personally? He's got a very subdued performance.
I don't know I guess if you get right down to it, I didn't buy the chemistry between Grant and Sheridan. I don't know if they were too successful at being snippy towards one each other or what, but I just think the moment when she falls in love with him wouldn't have seemed so random if I had bought into their chemistry.
And I know this is an American movie thing and that's it's based on something that happened to a French soldier and American woman, but Cary Grant being French and making no attempt at all at seeming like he's anything but an Englishman is weird. I don't want Grant to try being French or anything, but why in the world did they not just make him British? Bizarre.
I had higher hopes for this being a Hawks screwball and featuring Cary Grant, but unfortunately I Was a Male War Bride is not a movie I plan to revisit.
1.5/4 stars
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