It's a Gift (1934)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The first must-see film of the year.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

In this movie, poor Harold Bissonette (W.C. Fields) is a henpecked husband married to Amelia, with his pretty daughter Jean, her boyfriend, and his bratty son Norman, who always causes trouble. Harold's rich relative dies and leaves him about $4,000. He buys, sight unseen, an Orange Ranch in California. First he has to endure the worst day possible at his New Jersey grocery store: The blind man (Mr.Muckle) breaks his store's glass door and a stacked pile of light bulbs. He puts on a fur coat to cut some beefsteak inside the meat locker. Baby LeRoy wreaks the store and spills a keg of molasses on the floor ("Stickiest stuff I've ever seen") But first: the kumquat customer never gets his fruit. Blind and deaf Mr. Muckle, leaves the store after dodging several cars, a fire truck and an ambulance while crossing the street. Also contains the famous "Are you Carl LaFong?" scene as he tries to sleep on the back porch to get away from his wife's incessant nagging, a noisy milkmen, an annoying insurance salesman, a "possessed" coconut, Baby LeRoy (throwing grapes on Fields), and a collapsing porch swing! All this and more makes it quite impossible for him to sleep! He buys a totally beat up touring car and travels 3,000 miles from New Jersey to California and has a few more minor mis-adventures along the way. (At a "tourist camp campfire" and at a picnic where he gets "rained out" by sprinklers while trespassing on private property. When they all finally get to the "orange ranch" it is dried up and falling apart but he manages to sell it to a man that needs the land to build a race track grandstand! So, he "wins out" after all: over $44,000 in cash, an orange "grove" and a beautiful ranch. He shares an orange (from his gin and orange) with his only other true friend-in-the-world, his faithful dog. A great film, but I like several other Fields films better!

What makes W.C. Fields' comedy so good is the use of his body. Watch him walk in It's a Gift: he uses strategically placed steps and movements. And hear how his voice modulates from authoritative to submissive, sometimes within the same line of dialogue. But what gives his comedy and the film such relevance is the value that is placed on the relationship of Fields' character with the surrounding members of his immediate family and community. There are some tender moments with his daughter; with the blind man at the store; and later on the road, with his wife. I think Fields understood the nature of human relationships, and that is what takes priority in this movie. Sure, life is not perfect. There are many foibles to be sure. But it's a gift.

This was torture, absolute torture! The jokes are not funny, you pretty much hate the entire cast especially the kid, the voice of the wife everything, its so stupid and BORING! I honestly do not know how I survived this film, I like classic films, but this was just absolutely freaking bad. I stopped the film after 50 minutes otherwise I would have committed suicide. The rest of the film I watched stuffing junk food in my mouth to at least enjoy something for 18 minutes. The movie itself its not long, but if I apply Einstein's theory of relativity those 68 minutes will seem like a freaking year.DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE, IT'S NOT WORTH THE TIME NOR THE MONEY!

I think only in The Bank Dick was W.C. Fields more henpecked than he is in It's A Gift. He also has a perfect foil for his brand of humor in Kathleen Howard as his wife in the second of three films she did with the man from Philadelphia.In this film more than most of Fields's films I think the real secret of his comedy comes out. I can't think of a single funny line from It's A Gift worth remembering. But what does stick with you are all the gestures and expressions with his body and face that Fields gives us to show the hellhole of his married state.Kathleen Howard in fact doesn't let the poor guy get a word in edgewise. What a motormouth that woman had, constantly finding fault and running him down from the first to the last minute of the movie. Right at the beginning of the film the poor guy can't even have the bathroom to himself as kids and wife just barge in on him with their problems and complaints. In that scene where Fields is trying to shave, to later on when he goes out on the porch hammock to get some peace and quiet, it's nothing in what he says, but in all the reaction shots where the comedy comes from. Even in the famous scene at the general store with the blind man Mr. Muckle. The comedy is all in Fields's reactions to Muckle running amuck. Trying not to say anything to observe political correctness. Remember Muckle is also identified as the house detective in the hotel across the street.Kathleen Howard serves as Fields's greatest foil, no wonder he did three films with her. Note how Hyacinth like she is in insisting that her name Bissonette be pronounced Bissonay.Still Fields pursues the American dream and when Uncle Bean dies and wills him some California property, he loads up the truck and moves to, well not Beverly Hills, but close enough so he can get an orange grove and grow them. It comes about in an interesting way that you have to see the film for.It's A Gift is one of the finest efforts of America's most beloved misanthropes.