Review of Without Reservations

. . . after seeing that actress Claudette Colbert was top-billed as the romantic interest for the much younger John Wayne, I shot a jumbo banana magazine of Beebees into the shiny side of my DVD, and then played it at 1/3 speed, just reading the English subtitles and trying to guess who was saying what as the actors' faces were constantly sliding off into digital limbo, and only every fourth line of dialogue popped onto the screen. I think my viewing technique improved WITHOUT RESERVATIONS a lot (mostly by keeping me awake), so I'd recommend it to others. This RKO flick was released in 1946, and Ms. Colbert was being kissed under haystacks decades earlier as a Silent Movie Star! Her bare leg may have stopped a car and won an Oscar in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, but then a Longggg Great Depression and World War happened, and the average American aged at least two decades by 1946. (Some went downhill by three or more, like Ms. Colbert.) As in THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, all of Ms. Colbert's crow's feet were coming home to roost at once as they shot RESERVATIONS. Apparently she had aged so much by the end of the shoot that when the producers saw the "dailies" of her final reunion scene with Mr. Wayne's character, they were forced to re-shoot it with Claudette entirely off-screen!