You Can't Take It With You

You’ve got to be kidding -- Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director?? The third nod in five years for Frank Capra, who did almost nothing to cinematize the Pulitzer-winning play by Kaufman and Hart. Much of the wackiness is strained, and so is the sentiment, the action is stage-bound, too long and too slow, but nearly all the characters have their moments (except for the jaw-dropping portrayal of the Negro domestics) and there are some screwball laughs scattered throughout the enterprise. Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart are winning as a couple from different sorts of families, she’s the sane one among the crackpots and he’s the dreamer in a line of aggresively proper bankers. Lionel Barrymore beams as the grandpa of the anarchic clan and Edward Arnold growls as the power-grabbing stuffed shirt. Other familiar faces frolic through, to no great purpose. (1938, dvd, n.) *6-*