This starts unpromisingly (or was I just in the wrong mood?) with slapstick banana-skin-style gags which, however well done, show their age. Jean Arthur looks unassuming compared with her strong-girl tomboyish appearances in the Capra classics. But come Joel McCrea and the burgeoning love (at first resisted) between him and Arthur, and she shows a vulnerability and a range of expression that round out our knowledge of an already well-loved artist.
Charles Coburn, too, after the comic-strip cackhandedness of the first scenes, grows into an enjoyably human old rascal and Joel McCrea, blasé and hardbitten to begin with, develops into a fine romantic hero. The ending (will they, won't they?)recalls the end of the Cary Grant/Irene Dunne classic "The Awful Truth", and if I say that McCrea and Arthur do not pale by comparison, then I could hardly give higher praise than that.
Charles Coburn, too, after the comic-strip cackhandedness of the first scenes, grows into an enjoyably human old rascal and Joel McCrea, blasé and hardbitten to begin with, develops into a fine romantic hero. The ending (will they, won't they?)recalls the end of the Cary Grant/Irene Dunne classic "The Awful Truth", and if I say that McCrea and Arthur do not pale by comparison, then I could hardly give higher praise than that.