You Can't Take it With You (No Rating)
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If you've tired of It's a Wonderful Life, but still want a good jolt of Frank Capra's populist cheer and gently comic class antagonism, check out this hilarious and, yes, heartwarming movie from 1938. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Broadway legends George Kaufman and Moss Hart, You Can't Take It with You turns on the star-crossed romance between banking scion Tony Kirby (James Stewart, in full-on aw-shucks mode) and his stenographer Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur)--a match made even more unacceptable to the Kirbys by the fact that Alice's grandfather (Lionel Barrymore) refuses to sell his home to make way for one of Kirby Sr.'s deals. Tony's high society parents are straight out of central casting, given little to do other than be shocked by Alice's wacky, salt-of-the-earth family. But it's how this family is wacky that's most fascinating: They all refuse to do any work that isn't personally fulfilling. Such a position might seem perverse in the midst of the Depression--when, presumably, most people felt lucky if they had any work at all--but the dream of unalienated labor provides the film with its giddy, anarchic, even subversive spirit. Indeed, when Barrymore and his clan are erroneously accused of being communist agitators, one can't help but think that there's a grain of truth to the charge. (Derek Nystrom)
Review by Derek Nystrom
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