SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

atlasmb A Stranger in Town is a rather inconsequential film released in 1943. It is listed as a romance/drama, but it is more comedy than anything else, because the story is written very lightly.When I saw the title, I immediately wondered which version of small-town America would be presented--the myth of small town generosity that embraces all strangers as if they were friends, or the sometime reality that in small towns, people are suspicious of strangers and their motives, regarding them as outsiders (and sometimes barbarians). We don't have to wait long to find out.Supreme Court justice Joe Grant (played by Frank Morgan) visits the small town of Crown Port to get away from the city and hunt ducks. He immediately encounters the local game warden who invokes a local law and tries to extract a few bucks out of him. Joe goes to court to contest the fine and gets a less than encouraging result. While in town, he meets Bill Adams (Richard Carlson), a local attorney who is miffed enough about the entrenched, corrupt town mayor, and his cronies, to run for election against the mayor. But he feels he is fighting a losing battle, so his effort is half-hearted. Joe becomes a mentor to the young attorney and eventually lights a fire under his nominal campaign. Joe brings his secretary, Lucy Gilbert (Jean Rogers), to town where she also becomes involved in the proceedings.Both sides--the political machine of the incumbent and Bill's allies--use (some arcane) laws to battle. They thrust and parry until there is fighting in the streets.This is another film about the rights of men, and how they should hold government responsible in the name of justice. But if one watches carefully, the film demonstrates the unfortunate truth that the law is not about justice. Real knowledge of law is only available to attorneys. The common man must avail himself of their services, knowing that laws are created by (mostly lawyer) politicians. We all know how highly politicians are held in the public's esteem.Though this film was shooting for a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-type rallying of the human spirit in the name of the "little man", it falls short. In the end, this film wraps up very neatly, as expected. I would watch the film, but not expect more than a cute little story with likable characters.

Kittyman In "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939), fly-over wisdom solves Washington corruption. In "A Stranger in Town" (1943), Washington wisdom solves fly-over corruption.Frank Morgan portrays an incognito Supreme Court justice, who during his duck-hunting vacation, is reluctantly drawn into a small town fight against corruption. It is a dramatic change from his usual flamboyant-befuddled performance, and he does pretty well. One discordant note, however, occurs early in the picture. Morgan, while cradling a shotgun, meanders throughout town, into a barbershop, and even a courtroom. Nowadays, he'd have been pounced on, and probably branded a lunatic.The film's pace is snappy, the romantic leads (Richard Carlson and Jean Rogers) have excellent chemistry, and the supporting cast is fabulous. It includes Robert Barrat, Porter Hall, John Hodiak (in his debut), Donald MacBride, Andrew Tombes, and Chill Wills (later Francis-the-Talking-Mule's voice). Ironically, however, Robert Barrat, who does a fine job playing the oleaginous mayor, had, about a decade earlier, been cast in an opposing role as a bucolic reformer fighting corruption. (His part was in "The St. Louis Kid" [1934], a charming James Cagney vehicle.) Yet, "A Stranger" has two sloppy errors, both of which occur in the same scene. (They should have been caught and corrected.) First, Carlson enters the local hotel and orders a "single room" for the night, but walks away leaving his key behind. Then, the following morning in court, he testifies that the hotel had violated the law by having the twin beds in his room placed less than two feet apart. If his room was a single, however, it wouldn't have had twin beds.Finally, you might try following-up this film with "The Magnificent Yankee" (1950) if you're into related double features. It is a heartwarming story about Oliver Wendell Holmes, an actual Supreme Court justice, whose tenure would have ended at about the same time Morgan's fictitious one had started.

MartinHafer Oddly, this film stars Frank Morgan as a Supreme Court justice! He's on vacation and runs afoul of a small town's corrupt administration. The crooked judge, mayor and their henchmen don't realize who Morgan is, so he's able to see first-hand their under-handed tactics. Because of their abuse of political power, Morgan decides to stick around and assist a naive young lawyer (Richard Carlson) in his bid to become mayor. At first, they are pretty much ignored, though in time, when the race for mayor seems tight, the old mayor unleashed a wave of dirty tricks--not realizing that Morgan holds the ultimate trump card.I had a hard time deciding whether to score this one a 7 or an 8. It was very good--particularly for a B-movie. Being a "B", it is a relatively short picture (only 67 minutes) but unlike many Bs it has excellent production values (especially the writing) and is very entertaining. About the only knock against it is that I thought the fight scenes were a bit too "slapsticky" and didn't exactly integrate well into the rest of the picture. Still, it's a dandy performance by Frank Morgan, as he's more restrained (i.e., less "hammy") than in most of his starring vehicles--well worth seeing and a lot of fun--as well as a decent civics lesson.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Taking a long needed vacation from his duties as a United States Supreme Court Justice the Honorable Judge John Josephus Grant, Frank Morgan, goes to the little sleepy town of Crownport to among other things go duck hunting. What the judge doesn't realize is what a den of corruption and thievery that town is.As soon as the judge went out hunting he was a victim of a shake-down by the towns game warden Warren Todd, Olin Howlin. Todd with the help of Crownport Judge Austin Harkley, Porter Hall, fleeced the startled judge of $100.00 in fines for not having a Crownport hunting license even though he had a state hunting license. The judge didn't even have a chance to get off one shot before he was stopped by Game Warden Todd. Judge Grant decides to remain undercover and clean up the town of Crownport and finds help in a honest but bumbling politician running for mayor Bill Adams, Richard Carlson. The judge also calls his private secretary Lucy Gilbert, Jean Rogers, to come over to lend him and Bill a hand. That Lucy can really swing a mean and heavy law book when things get out of hand in the film. The mayor of the town of Crownport James Connison, Robert Barrat, is a sleazy shyster who uses all the power of his office as well as a gang of head breaking goons to keep everyone in order. Now he's having trouble with Bill running against him for mayor and does everything he can to sabotage his campaign. First he has Bill evicted from his offices because of a health hazard which was that Bill had some wood there and it was determined by Connison's health inspectors that the lumber would attract termites. Next the mayor has his goons assault Bill and when he fights back, very badly, he's arrested for disturbing the peace and thrown in jail.Lucy is also arrested with Bill on trumped up charges as she defended herself as well as Bill with a heavy law book that she broke a couple of Connison's goons heads with. Meanwhile judge Grant slowly works his magic or better yet knowledge of the law, behind the scenes, to build an air-tight case against the Connison mob. The goons working for him begin to chicken out as they realize that their slowly getting their necks in a ringer by the skillful and wily Judge Grant. There's also a romance developed in the movie between Bill and Lucy and at the end of the film they get married and guess just who's the justice of the peace at their wedding? With the noose tightening around Mayor Connison's neck his goons and even his hand picked stooge of a judge Judge Harkley desert him. Connison, being the arrogant and power hungry jerk that he is, is the last one to realize that he's been set up and shot down. At a town hall meeting where Connison thinks that he's about to be anointed mayor he's exposed as a crooked politician and a man who betrayed the trust that the good people of Crownport gave to him. It's there when Judge Grant finally reveals who he is, not just a stranger in town but the United States Supreme Court Justice John Josephus Grant. Mayor Connison who thought all this time that he was running the show is practically run out of town and ends up, together with his goon squad, behind bars. "A Stranger in Town" gives the audience a fine civic lesson about the responsibilities of being a good American citizen which Judge Grant brings out at the end of the movie with a stirring speech about what America really stands for and what the saying "The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave" really means. Worth watching now as it was back then in 1943 about an America that was meant to be in the nation that our founding fathers fought and died for back during the American Revolutionary War.