Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not liable to be forgotten again ever, 29 Jan 2005
What otherworldly power decides what films survive in the public mind decade after decade? And what films don't?'The More the Merrier' is completely forgotten, although in its time, during WWII, it was a huge hit and was nominated for several of the most prestigious Academy Awards, Best Picture, Director, Leading Actress, Script etc. And deserved every one of those nominations. It is, simply a great film, that time forgot, and one that is finally out on DVD. And it remains a mystery how a sexy, sassy, down-to-earth and abundantly funny film such as this could ever be forgotten. In the Washington of 1943, with the housing crisis brought on by the war, single working girl Jean Arthur feels compelled to do her bit and let out half of her apartment. Well-to do businessman Charles Coburn, who has arrived in town too early for a conference and cannot find a vacant hotel room, moves in with her, and, wanting to play Cupid, he sublets, unbeknownst to her, his half of half her apartment to a young soldier, Joel McCrea, on town on a mysterious purpose. Rumour has it that Garson Kanin, of later 'Adam's Rib' fame, wrote the script for 'The More the Merrier', but never took credit. Whoever did it, the premise and even more so the execution of the plot is wonderfully crisp and superbly done. There is not one moment in this film that doesn't work on an extremely advanced level, and as sheer exuberant fun! George Stevens, one of the truly great American directors, has titles such as 'Gunga Din', 'Penny Serenade', 'Woman of the Year', 'A Place in the Sun', 'Shane' and 'The Diary of Anne Frank' to his credit, and 'The More the Merrier' has won a place in that exalted category of masterpieces in all genres. It is obvious that Stevens got a kick out of directing his actors in this movie, creating a many-coloured carpet with all this apparently improvised dialogue, so magnificently stylish and at the same time with a looseness, a naturalness in structure that makes the movie feel like a slice of real life. But of course real life was, almost, never as wonderful as this! Just imagine having known characters like the ones played by Miss Arthur and Mr McCrea, in one respect they are so typical and easily recognisable, and in another they are so immensely attractive, and not just in a physical sense, that you would want them for your best friends. In a strict Hollywood sense, try and imagine two more gorgeous people in the scene near the end when they, almost but not quite, make on a the quiet street where they share the apartment! The film is great, no two ways about it. The transfer is not too good, quite a shame really, and there are no subtitles at all, not even English for the hearing-impaired.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gorgeous romantic comedy, 22 Dec 2000
By A Customer
Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea are typically fabulous in this wonderful comedy about a very strange flat share. The action drops off a little after Arthur and McCrea have declared their love for each other, but it's still a terrific movie.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This classy romantic comedy stars Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea...and a triumphantly sly Charles Coburn as cupid, 25 Feb 2009
Was I ever wrong. For years I looked upon Charles Coburn as a fat, porcine old gentlemen who always had a big, wet-chewed cigar in his mouth. I was so awed by the cheesy melodrama of Kings Row that I barely noticed his startling performance as Dr. Gordon, the cruel, vindictive surgeon who made Drake McHugh cry out, "Where's the rest of me?" Then I saw The Lady Eve, and then The Devil and Miss Jones. And now, The More the Merrier. Not only could Coburn define surgery at its worst, I finally realized that he was one of the most subtle and skilled practitioners of high-class comedy. Coburn won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his work in The More the Merrier. He could just as justifiably won it for Eve and Miss Jones. As good a movie as The More the Merrier is, and as good as Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea are, Charles Coburn as Benjamin Dingle, "a well-to-do retired millionaire," who turns out to be an uncommonly sly cupid, refocuses the movie every time he's on screen.
We're in the middle of WWII in Washington and housing is almost impossible to come by. Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur) places an ad for a roommate to share her two-bedroom flat. Benjamin Dingle (Coburn) is in town on business and without a hotel room. He spots the ad, bulls his way past a hoard of eager applicants and simply fast talks his way in. He notices that this attractive young woman seems to have a lonely life. In fact, she's engaged to a Washington bureaucrat as romantic as an officious waiter. It's not long before Dingle spots Joe Carter (Joel McCrea) looking for a room. Joe is tall and good-looking. Within minutes Dingle has subleased half of his subleased room to Joe. It won't be long before the three of them are falling over each other. But will Connie and Joe fall for each other? Dingle, with guile and good-intentions, is going to give it a try.
This could be as conventionally predictable as a Luci-Desi episode. Thanks to director George Stevens, a bright, funny script, and Arthur, McCrea and Coburn, it's anything but. The More the Merrier is a classy and funny romantic comedy that, especially in the first half, comes close at times to a classic Marx Brothers routine. It even helps at times to appreciate many of the situations as comedy routines, so highly polished by first-rate actors that the comedy pile-ups and split-second timing seem spontaneous. Let's see...for starters there's the "explaining the morning action plan with diagram" routine with Arthur and Coburn, the "who gets the bath, who gets the egg" routine with Coburn, Arthur and McCrea, the "where's my pants" routine with Coburn, the "Connie and Joe and the leather traveling bag" routine with Arthur and McCrea, and the "Who did you go with to the beach" routine with Arthur and McCrea. Sure, we have three actors playing cute...but if they ever appear that they're playing cute it won't be either cute or funny. Arthur and Coburn are experts at this kind of straight-faced, split-second community comedy, and McCrea, it turns out, is good at it, too.
As often as Jean Arthur in the Thirties and Forties had some excellent leading men to work with -- McCrea, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Charles Boyer, James Stewart and Ronald Colman among others -- it might just be that her perfect partner in comedy was Charles Coburn. They starred in three pictures together:
The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941, The More the Merrier in 1943 and The Impatient Years in 1944. Arthur was a strong, skilled actress who could be fey, puzzled, endearing, innocently romantic, completely natural, sexy and subtle. Her voice, instantly recognizable, helped define her screen persona. She could come across as vulnerable, but she more than held her own in her movies. I can't think of any movies she made after the mid-Thirties that weren't defined as "Jean Arthur movies." Coburn, old enough to be her grandfather, was so good an actor -- a comic actor when called upon -- that he managed to make a balance with her that is part of the mystery of why some actors click together and others don't. It's to his skill that he was able to make this connection with other actors as well. Just watch him in The Lady Eve share any scene with Barbara Stanwyck.
The More the Merrier is one of Hollywood's proudly sweet-natured romantic comedies, with a lot of fast-paced physical action thrown in. Even the sentimentality is amusing. The movie was remade in 1966 as Walk, Don't Run with Gary Grant, Samantha Egger and Jim Hutton. For lessons in how to turn a bright, clever romantic comedy into a plod, Cary Grant's last film, unfortunately, is the one to see.
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