IT HAPPENED TO JANE (1959) **1/2 Lawyer Lemmon (Jack) litigates for lonely lovely lobster lady. The time: the 50s. The place: New England . The bout: Doris Day versus the increasingly ugly and corporate face of big money. Gee, I wonder who's gonna win. Of course some of them did understand what was happening, and were trying to figure out ways to do something about it. The mix of public pressure and media scrutiny suggested here is about as good as anyone come up with, now if we could just work on that collective attention disorder. It's a tale of trains and patriots and fire trucks. Of course the inclination is to point out that they savage the civil procedure code (wouldn't that small town judge have been a hero, though?), but to even contemplate that is to begin missing the point. The underlying poetic dynamic is more true than anything written or read in a sterile environment. There's a reason not to mess with bullies, and a reason some of us have to. Everyone else can just back us up when their astral charts and biorhythms are peaking. Jack Lemmon does particularly well on his higher octane orations, but he also fails to note that our national heroes, when battling those Redcoats and Kennebunk Indians, did a little bit more than vote the right way for town council. I was just waiting for him to yell, "Let's set fire to that damn train and ram it back down the track all the way back to." I don't know, Doris looks a bit more freckly than usual, and it suits her. Ernie Kovacs is my favorite, though, because he's so great at being awful that you're just hoping that he'll turn good. Am I suggesting that we once enjoyed a higher standard of greedy, petty, vindictive corporate raider? Probably, evolution does seem to take unfortunate turns as well as teleological ones. But on a bright note, don't the unfortunate ones often lead to extinction? Too dark a bright note to mull here. I don't care how hokey it is, I really enjoy this rah-rah flag-waving patriotic feel-gooding stuff where everybody turns good at the end, when it's done this well.
back to Brilliant Observations on 2120 Films page, or Index
go back home, or send me email
Reviews won't do it any more! I need sustained brilliance! I want to buy your exciting new terrorist novel!
I've already read both of your novels. Thank you, they're amazing. Now I want to check out your weekly blog on everything
Internet Movie Database