It’s a Wonderful World (1939)

It’s a Wonderful World (1939)

An unusual unsympathetic ‘hot head’ role for James Stewart combined with Claudette Colbert as a non-typical weak character a poet who becomes an effusive gushing girl in Stewart’s presence makes this comedy less enjoyable than I’d hoped it would be. Plus instead of the great dialogue one might expect from a Ben Hecht-Herman Mankiewicz story the two seemed to be out of their element in comedy choosing instead to rely on cheap slapstick for gags. Directed by W. S. Van Dyke The Thin Man (1934).

Stewart plays an investigator that is caught helping a friend (Ernest Truex) of his accused of murder hide from the law. So he is arrested but later escapes becoming a fugitive intent on proving his friend’s innocence. (I’m leaving out his motivation because it becomes a plot point a source of disillusionment later in the film). He runs into Colbert who quickly realizes Stewart’s running from the law. She’s naturally afraid and initially resists his efforts and he uses her to avoid capture. However based upon his manner she realizes he is no hood and decides to assist him though he wants nothing of it. It becomes an adventure for her and an opportunity for him to rant about women the unfairness of life you name it.

The rest of the film is a series of misadventures as "the couple" tries to elude the police and solve the crime for which Stewart’s friend was accused. The story includes Guy Kibbee as another of Stewart’s friends who’s enlisted to help and gets one too many bumps on the head. There is also Nat Pendleton as one of the policeman from which Stewart escapes who’s always hot on his trail and Edgar Kennedy & Cliff Clark as the higher ranking law enforcement officers in charge.

If Colbert and Stewart exhibited half as much chemistry together as Myrna Loy and William Powell did in their "Thin Man" films or the script was a fraction as clever as the original in that series this movie could have been a comedy classic.

Purchase this DVD now at