Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

rhoda-9 IMDb reviews are not infallible, but they are usually reasonably reliable. Not so in this case. This movie is a combination of two popular contemporary themes, the princess who is mistaken for a commoner (or vice versa) and the hasty wartime marriage. Both are treated much better in every such movie I can think of. The themes have lost their appeal and relevance, and what we are left with is a very dull movie with a lame script and boring actors. Numerous reviews say this film is not just humorous but hilarious. I didn't laugh once. Didn't even smile.Olivia de Havilland, of course, I exempt from the "boring" category. As ever she is sweet, charming, endearing, and thoroughly delightful. But opposite her is a blank space called Bob Cummings, who is superficial and puerile. How could anyone think that a character far less intelligent and educated than she could be a good match? His moment of trying to be masterful with de Havilland makes him look childishly bad-tempered, and the scene in which he struggles with correct terminology makes it embarrassingly obvious how dumb he is. It is also embarrassing that, for much of the movie, de Havilland is led to believe that, while she was unconscious, he undressed her and saw her naked. This is not funny--it is leering and distasteful. It is also out of character for de Havilland to become friendly, then romantic with someone who would do this. There are other foolishly unrealistic bits for the sake of a laugh--when she gets out of bed, for instance, wearing Cummings's pajamas, she nearly trips, as she has on pj's that look big enough for someone eight feet tall.It's also bizarre that de Havilland, desperate to sleep, takes five sleeping pills. Later she is unknowingly given two more. For heaven's sake, who doesn't know that taking several sleeping pills means you risk not waking up at all? Certainly not someone as sensible and educated as she is.The other main male part is filled by Charles Coburn. When given amusing lines and when there is not too much of him, as in Heaven Can Wait or The Lady Eve, he can be amusingly rakish or crooked. Here, as the soul of propriety, and with nothing funny to say, he is just a boring blowhard--and hardly easy on the eye. Gladys Cooper is insulted by the role given her--this eminent and distinguished lady has only a few lines to say, none of them at all interesting.On the plus side, the movie has Jack Carson and Jane Wyman (each very appealing, they make a very cute couple). But their parts are also too small and pretty feeble. And Jane Wyman isn't herself yet. I kept wondering when she was going to put in an appearance before I realised she was the actress with the long, blonde curly hair. Very disconcerting.It's hard to get a dog wrong, but the makers of this movie could not even manage a nice Scotch terrier to impersonate President Roosevelt's dog, Fala. This one has very prominent teeth, and in closeups he looks rather alarming. I wouldn't trust him around my ankles.While some flag-waving propaganda is understandable in a wartime movie, the filmmakers go too far when they present Bob Cummings with this "dilemma": He can marry a doll like Olivia de Havilland and have £150,000 spending money a year (think what that would be today!) if he gives up his American citizenship. I wonder how many men in the audience would immediately and vehemently turn that down!I originally was drawn to this movie because I thought it was based on the Damon Runyon story of the same title, about a female hack driver and her horse named Goldberg. THAT is a really good story, it is really funny (I laughed out loud at the end), and a smaller and more profitable investment of your time than this piece of junk.

paulbpage Looked at with 70 years distance, the 'charming romantic comedy' involves a princess being drugged, stripped and dumped at a safe house in New York. One can imagine the developments being portrayed in a somewhat different way. And it's not to be hard on the movie - Olivia De Havilland is absolutely superb in a light comic turn - but it is interesting to see how society has changed and the little things taken for granted in the movie, such as a flight crew handing out sleeping pills to a passenger, are thoroughly anathema today. That said, it's De Havilland's performance that carries it. You can see Robert Cummings forming the light character that he would perfect to an annoying degree in the coming years.

bkoganbing Seeing Princess O'Rourke last night on TCM, it was interesting to learn that interiors at the White House were shot at the real location. And while the current president was occupied by something called World War II, he found time to have his well known Scot's terrier Fala make a guest appearance.That is the real Fala you see playing message courier between Princess Olivia DeHavilland and the pilot from Brooklyn, Robert Cummings. She's a princess from some unnamed European country that is currently occupied by some jackbooted uninvited guests. Most of the royalty in exile settled in the United Kingdom during war time, but some actually did make it here. In fact Olivia's father the king is in London as the story goes.And this is a Cinderella story in reverse with the boy from Brooklyn, meeting, wooing and winning a princess. Cummings is an airline pilot scheduled to go in the Army Air Corps who meets princess DeHavilland on a flight that gets canceled back to New York. A slight overdose of sleeping pills leaves her in his unwanted hands. The unwanted part changes soon enough as it does in all films of this type.The ironic thing is while some royalty did make it back to their countries, a lot were dispossessed permanently by those other totalitarian occupiers from the East after World War II. They didn't exactly live in the diminished circumstances that Olivia was heading for. Some of Charles Coburn's concerns as her uncle are quite real.Princess O'Rourke is a charming comedy though dated by its topical wartime references. Look also for nice performances by Jack Carson as Cummings's co-pilot and Jane Wyman as Carson's girl friend.

fung0 Yes, it's a wartime movie, with some fairly subtle propaganda thrown in. Yes, it's a formula romance. Well, I'm afraid I love formula romances. And I guess I can even respect propaganda when it's done with panache and sincerity.Norman Krasna's screenplay is the real star. Watching the film I was constantly amazed at how the dialog sparkled, how the situations never worked out in quite the way I expected, how the characters always seemed just a little warmer and more human than they might have in many similar films of this era.The cast is excellent as well, consisting entirely of Hollywood stalwarts, every one of them at their most endearing. Jack Carson, Charles Coburn and Jane Wyman are all great, of course. But Olivia De Havilland is also perfectly cast, lovable on one hand, regal on the other... yet without that slightly simpering quality that made her less likable in, say, The Adventures of Robin Hood, or Gone With the Wind. Robert Cummings was a fine comedic actor who is not well-remembered today, perhaps because he was less multidimensional than someone like James Stewart; but he's used to excellent advantage here. He's not just portraying the perfect everyman Yank; he IS that (perhaps mythical) person, the Guy From Brooklyn. And, yes, the perfect wartime Yank, who's just got to join up and be in "the biggest fight of all time, and the most important." Just as Bogart had to go be a hero at the end of Casablanca. These wartime films earn much of their charm by being unashamedly part of their times.But ultimately, it's the little touches that raise this film far above the ordinary. The extended gag with the multiple sleeping pills; the silly little bits with the president's dog... These don't distract from the warmth of the film, they add to it.Perhaps we undervalue a film like Princess O'Rourke simply because the material and the style are so familiar. We need to step back and admire the Hollywood dream-factory at its finest, working to a certain format, yet also bringing together the talented individuals who could make that format sing.I'll take a wonderfully-executed "formula" film like Princess O'Rourke any day, over self-consciously brilliant films that forget the basics of how to entertain.