Christmas in July (1940)

Christmas in July
Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1940/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Jimmy MacDonald: If you can’t sleep, it isn’t the coffee. It’s the bunk.[/box]

Preston Sturges is a great favorite of mine but somehow this early effort leaves me less than wildly enthusiastic.

Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell) and Betty Casey (Ellen Drew) are in love.  Jimmy doesn’t want to marry unless he can do so in style.  He has his hopes pinned on winning $25,000 in a coffee slogan contest.  In the meantime, the jury at the coffee company is deadlocked in choosing the winner due to a recalcitrant member (William Demerest). Jimmy’s office mates play a practical joke by sending him a telegram to say he won.  When he takes it in to the company president, he writes Jimmy a check and the hijinx begin.  With Franklin Pangborn and a host of character actors from Sturges’s stock company.

This just does not hit the heights of inspired lunacy I expect from Sturges.  That’s not to say that it isn’t a perfectly fine picture and very funny in places.  Something may be a little off about the pacing.  I like Dick Powell very much but I also think that he lacked the necessary edge to carry off the lead role here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPzSfSzRfW0

Clip