Mr. Lucky (1943)

To me, this movie is perfection.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Kind of unusual to have Cary Grant learning to knit while heading a mob trying to squeeze money out of a charity. Sounds a bit different as Grant is a draft dodger as well. The movie does work well though.After all, Grant pulls off being a con man. Loraine Day pulls off being the heiress that eventually becomes Grants target for the swindle. No matter how hard he tries to get away, Day keeps after him.Charles Bickford is excellent in support here. This movie ages better than many of the films from this period. You can tell RKO does not have a huge budget here but there is enough cast. There is a solid script though the ending gets a little muddled at one point.This does have the happy ending for Grant and Day and frankly she comes off very well in this movie.

I was literally on the edge of my seat in some bits just taken up by the drama of it all. The father reading the letter in the church--I could almost visualize a Greek villager rallying his countrymen to "spare Greek honor another hour." Then there's the leading lady, whose eyes sparkled and lit up at some of the things Grant did. What reality! There's definitely something magical about this film. I was particularly struck when the "Well this is a pleasant surprise" bit came on from the episode of Band of Brothers. It struck me then how I'm at like the crossroads of it all, watching this film in its proper context and then watching the modern Band of Brothers looking back to this time. I don't know, I really enjoyed the romance between them, I could even feel myself longing for them to be reunited, as if it was something I was experiencing. One of the discussion board subjects reads "ultimate chick flick for me," and I suppose that's the case. This is a film that rightly deserves its happy ending. For my own emotions to be so yanked around by something, it's gotta be a good sort of film.

The story here was just a little too boring and the humor just not funny enough. It added up to a film that was too boring to watch. That was further surprising because the cast was good: Cary Grant, Lariaine Day, Charles Bickford and Henry Stephenson. Grant may be the only big "star" in that group but I've always found Bickford and Stephenson to play interesting guys and Day had to have about the prettiest eyes I've ever seen. They just sparkle and it makes her face mesmerizing at times.Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to make me impressed over this film. It's simply too dated, humor-wise. I don't know how it was received in 1943, whether audiences laughed a lot at this but, unlike dramas, westerns, crime movies, etc., comedies can look very dated very quickly and today's audiences would not laugh at this.

Unavailable on DVD, but found on VHS at Blockbuster, "Mr Lucky" is a Cary Grant vehicle, even more than a morale boosting, "keep the homes fires burning" war movie. Grant gets to play a wide range of roles here: fashion plate, grifter, romantic lead, war hero and (most notably) knitter of sweaters. Look, I've seen them all: North By Northwest, Bringing Up Baby, To Catch A Thief, and on and on.This has many moments that match the very best that Cary Grant had on offer. Most notably, there's an extended sequence of Grant riffing in Cockney to Laraine Day. Now Cary Grant liked to identify himself as a Cockney (which is usually termed as an East Londoner), but here he gets the rare opportunity in his movie career to play one (also in Gunga Din), and when asked where he picked up the rhyming slang that makes Cockney so annoying (charming to Americans) he says: Australia ! Ah Hollywood... You've also got to admire the sartorial splendor which Cary maintains throughout the film, even though he 's supposedly a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks who left home at nine. Apparently there's a finishing school on Skid Row, and Cary was voted Best Dressed. Of course, one of the perverse running gags of "Mr Lucky" is that our hero wears absurdly garish ties, and does not know how to tie a Windsor knot. All he needs is Laraine Day to bring him the appropriate conservative necktie to complete him. Bless him he fights her off ... On a fifth viewing (over a lifetime), I have to admit the last twenty minutes drips with melodramatic sentiment out of step with our modern times (hey, I still tear up-don't tell anyone) but this is still a classic: funny, fast paced, easy on the eyes, and with a great supporting cast.