Directed by Frank Capra

Sometimes you can have all the right elements but they somehow don’t quite gel. This is the case with Frank Capra’s 1938 You Can’t Take It With You.

It has all the Capra elements, has the Capra touch, and even has Capra stalwarts like Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore and Edward Arnold. But it doesn’t quite work.

I think it’s because it tries too hard. It’s almost as if the movie senses something missing and therefore tries to mask it by pushing this too hard.

Jean Arthur plays the realtively level-headed member of a family of free-spirited oddballs, the Sycamores. At the head of their family is Grandpa, played by Lionel Barrymore, a man who long ago gave up the competitive rat-race most people are committed to in order to whatever he feels like doing.

Everyone in the family follows his credo - they all do precisley whatever makes them happy. The household is therefore chaotic - one daughter dances through the rooms, Arthur’s mother writes plays, someone’s husband makes music, while others make fireworks in the basement.

The household is wild and noisy.

Jean Arthur, the only family member who appears to actually work, meets Tony Kirby, played by Jimmy Stewart. They fall in love and want to marry. But Tony is the slightly rebellious son of parents who are straight-laced.

His father, Anthony P. Kirby (Edward Arnold) has little interest in anything other than making money. He’s the anti-thesis of the Sycamore’s Grandpa.

And that’s the films conflict and the source of its humour. The story is of how the Sycamore’s, who believe “you can’t take it with you,” win over the Kirby’s. (Well, Grandpa wins them over.)

It’s very much a Capra theme and is played out in very Capra style.

But it doesn’t work well. The scenes in the Sycamore household are simply too excessive.

The movie tries too hard to make in choatic and they become more annoying than amusing. The movie is also too long for the material.

The main joke, the free-wheeling Sycamores, wears out quickly.

And while the lead performers are all very good (though Barrymore’s Grandpa is a bit much), the supporting cast is a bit weak - less because of the performance than by the fact they have little to do except run around making noise.

At best, the movie is only mildly entertaining, mildly funny. However, given the other movies Frank Capra was making around this time, he can be forgiven for having one that falls a bit flat.

2 stars out of 4.

(Originally posted 2003.)