Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Movie review - "San Diego, I Love You" (1944) ***

 Little known comedy was the favourite of its director. Reginald Le Borg. It's a wacky family screwball comedy with widowed inventor Edward Everett Horton, hot daughter Louise Albritton and crazy kids. They go on a train to San Diego where Horton is to work on his raft design. 

All the tropes are there - overcrowded train carriages and hotel lobbies, bewildered black train porters, befuddled millionaires, kindly duffers, wisecracking kids, antics on the water, comic butlers.

Jon Hall is quite good as a straight man millionaire, reacting to the madcap family. Albritton is less strong - they were after a new Carole Lombard, and while Albritton tries she doesn't get there. Eric Blore is a butler working for Horton's family and I imagined them having a "butler off".

Lively, beautifully shot, plenty of energy. I didn't expect much and I was pleasantly surprised. Variety called it a "sleeper" and they were right.

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