"What a Christmas" is the closing line of this movie, coming from the lips of Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet) - a magazine publisher who's just experienced what probably would indeed have been his most confusing Christmas ever. Unfortunately, the last line just didn't quite capture my feelings about the movie.
It's not that this is a bad movie. Quite the contrary - it's a very pleasant seasonal film, but that may be its biggest problem. It's up against some pretty stiff competition in terms of Christmas films, and there was nothing in particular about this that would make me want to watch it again and again. We have certain holiday traditions in our home, some of which do revolve around watching certain movies. "A Christmas Carol," "Miracle On 34th Street," "It's A Wonderful Life." They're all annual events. Even a more recent piece of comedy such as "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" shows up in our house every year. "Christmas In Connecticut" was fun to watch once, but I can't see doing it every year.
The story had the potential to be funnier than it turned out to be. Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) is a magazine columnist, who offers cooking and homemaking tips from the perspective of her life as a wife and mother on a Connecticut farm. The problem is that she has no kids, she isn't married and she lives in an apartment in the city. Everything about her column is a lie, but her boss Yardley doesn't know that, and he arranges to have a sailor who spent 18 days in a life raft after his boat was shot out from under him (Jeff Jones, played by Dennis Morgan) spend Christmas with Lane and her "family" so that he can experience a real family Christmas. How to pull this off without Yardley figuring out the truth becomes the plot.
It's mildly funny, and Stanwyck and Morgan had a great chemistry. I also enjoyed the performances from S.Z. Sakall as Felix and Una O'Connor as Nora, and spent at least part of the movie wondering if those two would hook up. There's nothing really wrong with this, except possibly to note that at the very beginning of the film Jones and his buddy look awfully healthy for two guys who had been stuck in a life raft all that time! As I said, it just doesn't match up well to the classic Christmas competition.
It's not that this is a bad movie. Quite the contrary - it's a very pleasant seasonal film, but that may be its biggest problem. It's up against some pretty stiff competition in terms of Christmas films, and there was nothing in particular about this that would make me want to watch it again and again. We have certain holiday traditions in our home, some of which do revolve around watching certain movies. "A Christmas Carol," "Miracle On 34th Street," "It's A Wonderful Life." They're all annual events. Even a more recent piece of comedy such as "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" shows up in our house every year. "Christmas In Connecticut" was fun to watch once, but I can't see doing it every year.
The story had the potential to be funnier than it turned out to be. Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) is a magazine columnist, who offers cooking and homemaking tips from the perspective of her life as a wife and mother on a Connecticut farm. The problem is that she has no kids, she isn't married and she lives in an apartment in the city. Everything about her column is a lie, but her boss Yardley doesn't know that, and he arranges to have a sailor who spent 18 days in a life raft after his boat was shot out from under him (Jeff Jones, played by Dennis Morgan) spend Christmas with Lane and her "family" so that he can experience a real family Christmas. How to pull this off without Yardley figuring out the truth becomes the plot.
It's mildly funny, and Stanwyck and Morgan had a great chemistry. I also enjoyed the performances from S.Z. Sakall as Felix and Una O'Connor as Nora, and spent at least part of the movie wondering if those two would hook up. There's nothing really wrong with this, except possibly to note that at the very beginning of the film Jones and his buddy look awfully healthy for two guys who had been stuck in a life raft all that time! As I said, it just doesn't match up well to the classic Christmas competition.