The best screwball comedies, such as It Happened One Night and Sullivan's Travels, are unpredictable, fast-paced, and funny-- three qualities that The Awful Truth utterly lacks.
The plot begins badly and goes downhill — but oh, so very slowly since the story drags on. The screenplay is famous for witty lines, but most of the dialog strains unsuccessfully toward humor ("Well, I guess a man's best friend is his mother").
Divorce is used as a comic plot device, but the writers neglect to make it comic. Dunne demands a divorce from Cary Grant in the first ten minutes, in a painfully contrived scene that establishes her as fickle, callow, and bull-headed — hardly comic traits. When she impulsively takes up with Ralph Bellamy's dull character, the action goes from screwball to mothballed.
Meanwhile, her husband immediately agrees to the divorce, else there is no movie — and this film wouldn't be worth suffering through without Grant' s physical and verbal gifts. He gets a bit of help from Asta the wire-hair terrier, but that's it. Dunne is easily the least gifted actress he ever worked with, and I am not forgetting about Priscilla Lane.
The plot begins badly and goes downhill — but oh, so very slowly since the story drags on. The screenplay is famous for witty lines, but most of the dialog strains unsuccessfully toward humor ("Well, I guess a man's best friend is his mother").
Divorce is used as a comic plot device, but the writers neglect to make it comic. Dunne demands a divorce from Cary Grant in the first ten minutes, in a painfully contrived scene that establishes her as fickle, callow, and bull-headed — hardly comic traits. When she impulsively takes up with Ralph Bellamy's dull character, the action goes from screwball to mothballed.
Meanwhile, her husband immediately agrees to the divorce, else there is no movie — and this film wouldn't be worth suffering through without Grant' s physical and verbal gifts. He gets a bit of help from Asta the wire-hair terrier, but that's it. Dunne is easily the least gifted actress he ever worked with, and I am not forgetting about Priscilla Lane.