Sometimes we want to watch a movie in the evenings, but having a difficult time to pick one because our 2 year old daughter doesn’t go to bed early enough. Almost all recent movies have something in them, be it violence, rudeness, loudness, sex… that we don’t want her to watch. But we don’t always want to watch kids movies with her either. For these occasions we pick a movie made in the 1940′s or 1950′s. They are not always innocent movies, but rarely do we find anything objectionable in them, that could harm our baby at this stage.
That’s how we picked The Lady Eve. On one hand I could say this was good, old fashion fun. On the other hand I cannot really call it a wholesome family movie, after all, the heroine is a con artist, while the hero is her and her father’s victim. On the third hand, (please don’t count your hands), it is a romantic comedy about the power of love, that straightens even the crookedest crook. Overall it was a hilarious flick that the whole family enjoyed, along with grandma and grandpa, although I am less sure about the child. My wife and my mother-in-law could barely contain themselves when our not-yet-”Lady” Eve said the magic words: “They say a moonlit deck is a woman’s business office.” This single line contains so much history, assumption, gender roles, romanticized notions that it will stay memorable for all of us.
The script writing was superb, I enjoyed the one liners (“I need him like the ax needs the turkey.” “A girl of sixteen is practically an idiot anyway, so I can’t very well blame you for something that was practically done by somebody else.” “Let us be crooked, but never common.”) the clever riposts in conversations and the longer monologues, such as Jean’s talking to her pocket mirror, from which she observes Charles for the first time. The acting was on par with the writing. Not just the lead actors, Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, but the supporting characters were well developed and played. Finally the director, Preston Sturges, pulled the whole thing together phenomenally. I really have nothing bad to say about this movie. Go watch it and have a good time for 94 minutes.
IMDB’s summary: Returning from a year up the Amazon studying snakes, the rich but unsophisticated Charles Pike meets con-artist Jean Harrington on a ship. They fall in love, but a misunderstanding causes them to split on bad terms. To get back at him, Jean disguises herself as an English lady, and comes back to tease and torment him.
Trailer: