KWIF: Frankenstein (+3)

 KWIF(tanct)=Kent's Week in Film (that are not Christmas themed).

This Week:
Frankenstein (2025, d. Guillermo del Toro - netflix)
Good Fortune (2025, d. Aziz Ansari - rental)
One Of Them Days (2025, d. Lawrence Lamont - crave)
The Peanut Butter Solution  (1985, d.Michael Rubbo - blu-ray)

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When you've been subsisting on a diet of fast food and takeout like I have this past month, your taste buds kind of get used to the overly sweet or too salty, and they forget what a hearty, homecooked meal is like. My consumption of Hallmarkies in December has been the bloat inducing Uber Eats of entertainment consumption, skewing my perceptions of what is good and what is good for you. Watching any non-Hallmarkie, non-direct-to-streaming film has reminded me of the comfort of time, attention and care put into a production, like a good homecooked meal.  Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein in turn is like going to a Michelin-starred restaurant and having a fancy, expensive production of a meal put before you. It may or may not be to your tastes, but the devotion and dedication to thought and nuance is present, the artistry and mastery of form commands attention and respect.

Frankenstein is a slap in the face, a wake up call from the drudgery of holiday movie consumption (much in the way that Robert Eggers' Nosferatu was this time last year). There is a scene early on in Frankenstein that lasts maybe 90 seconds, wherein Christoph Waltz's Heinrich Harlander approaches Oscar Isaac's Victor Frankenstein at his home and appeals to him to allow him to be his benefactor in his research of resurrecting dead flesh. In this scene we see Frankenstein's apartment, rich with equipment and drawings and shelves and stacks of books and furniture that is well worn but also well crafted. It tells us of a man who comes from means but the means are wanting, but it also tells us of the erudite nature of the man, as well as his lack of care. The set is mind-blowing, impossible to take it all in within the short span of time it is on screen, but it's so evident that every damn detail has been thought through.

When you've gotten used to set decorated with all the care of Christmas vomiting on the walls and windows and everywhere else, this kind of thing is mind blowing. And pretty much every scene, every setting in this film is riddled with such consideration and exacting, precise detail. The assembly montage of Frankenstein's lab in a castle in the Scottish Highlands is riveting because of design and attention to nuance.

del Toro has always had this desire to enrich his worlds like he does here in Frankenstein, and generally accomplishes it but on a more restricted budget. This feels like del Toro let loose, all his pent-up creative energy exploding out of him, like a supernova.  It's a brilliant flash to observe, but eventually it ends.

I will admit, I do not know Mary Shelly's story "The Modern Prometheus" very well (nor the story of Prometheus, frankly), so it's hard for me to say where del Toro's adaptation deviates.

Here it is structure with a framing sequence set in the arctic in the late 1800s as a ship of Danes (? It's captain is played by Lars Mikkelson) is trapped in the ice on their voyage to discover the North Pole. They spy an explosion in the distance and race to find a man on the ice, brutalized, and a monster of a man demanding his return.

One action sequences later, the men on the boat have a reprieve as the monster has apparently drowned. The rescued man is Victor, and he tells the captain his tale of hubris and ego, starting with his overbearing, coldly distant father, and how the death of his mother in childbirth had driven him to see a cure to mortality.  The tale weaves through Frankenstein's early research and experimentation and and his relationships with Harlander and Harlander's neice Lady Elizabeth (Mia Goth) who is to wed Victor's younger brother William. The creation of his creature (Jacob Elordi in an exceptional physical performance) was supposed to be his triumph, but the creature's rebirth only led to disappointment. Victor is his father's son, and the creature is treated as such. All Victor sees is his failure in science, not a being in need of care and guidance. He sees a monster, a reflection of his overconfidence and desire to explore the unknown, and he decides to end it.

The creature interrupts Victor's story and begins to relay his own tale, the tale of what happened after Victor destroyed his lab and the castle with it, failing to eradicate the creature, instead leaving it to survive on its own it the wild. There it is just another animal moving through the trees, a target for the gun of hunters and men fearful of the unknown. The creature takes hostel in the barn of a family home, but remains hidden. He learns, as does his landlord's child, from the kindly, blind grandfather. When the family leave the old man on his own, the creature presents himself to the blind man and finds the friend, teacher, mentor and father figure Victor should have been.

Frankenstein is a tragedy, and in this telling, it's the tragedy of the perpetuating cycles of fathers and sons...mostly. The shame of del Toro's adaptation is his inability to fully escape the source material and fully embrace a specific narrative theme. As such, aspects of the tale seem extraneous or unnecessary or outside of the narrative context. The first half of the film- Victor's tale- is gorgeous, loaded with the richness of manufactured details, while the second is much more spare, using the natural landscape as much of its backdrop, showing the creature connecting with wildlife in a much more spiritual, grounded way. These are intentional decision, but the intensity of the eye-popping set and costume design becomes sorely missed in the creature's tale and has the unintentional effect of making it feel lesser than, even though it's not, really. Victor's tale provides the blood, but the creature's tale is the heart that pumps it.

Like Toasty, I was enraptured throughout the entire film. My cinematic taste buds were delighted by this well-crafted, robustly flavoured meal that's perhaps a little too familiar while also being a bold and challenging take in a comforting way. It's not perfection, by any means, but it's a film del Toro has been wanting to make for decades and in finally making it you can see all that refined artistry he's honed in the years since in this presentation, as well as feel his passion for the material. There is a sense of love and passion underpinning this Frankenstein I'm not sure I've seen in any other adaptation or iteration.

The only thing about doing an adaptation like this, or Dracula/Nosferatu or any other familiar tale (Shakespeare or Arthurian mythology) is there will never be a definitive version. There will always be another coming along with yet another take (Luc Besson's Dracula is impending as is Maggie Gyllenhaal's Bride of Frankenstein riff The Bride). So enjoy the meal, savour it, but you'll eventually need to eat again, each subsequent meal diluting the exceptional experience. You can always go back and have that fine dining experience again, but is it ever quite as good as the first time?

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The 1980s were rife with films like Good Fortune, comedies with fantastical elements but also a bit of social commentary. They ebbed in the 1990s and have all but faded away since. I was excited for this new foray into an old-style comedy, but life got in the way of getting to it in theatre.

The film starts with Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), a low-status Los Angeles-centric angel with small wings whose sole responsibility is to stop people who are texting and driving from getting into accidents. Gabriel has dreams of bigger things (bigger wings), of really making a difference, of It's A Wonderful Life-ing someone.

He saves Arj (Aziz Ansari) from a texting and driving accident, and takes a particular interest in him. He watches Arj's life as an underemployed documentary editor who's barely scraping by in the gig economy doing food delivery, small tasks and working pickup shifts at a hardware chain. Arj sleeps in his car and can't seem to get out of the cycle he's in. After working a garage clean up gig for venture capitalist Jeff (Seth Rogen), he winds up being Jeff's assistant, and going on a date with Elena from the hardware store. But a small moment of desperation leads to Jeff firing him. Despair has crept in, and Gabriel presents himself to Arj in hopes of turning his spirits around, of making a difference.

It seems Gabriel understanding of how to change someone's outlook on life is based on oversimplified tales from movies. He thinks that if he switches Arj's life with Jeff's that he can show Arj that money won't change what's really important. Except it does, and Arj doesn't want to let go of the new life-without-struggles that he has. Gabriel accidentally raises Jeff's awareness to the switch, and suddenly Arj feels the pressure and guilt of taking someone else's life, so he asks for a week to enjoy it, and Jeff think's he can do fine with struggling like he has never had to in his life...for one week.

But Gabriel's actions are off book, and his superior, Martha (Sandra Oh) suspends him, taking his wings and making him mortal. Jeff's only means of regaining his heavenly status is to get Arj to actually desire return to his old life. In the meantime, both Jeff and Gabriel are forced to live a different class of existence than what they're used to.

Given the times we are in, I get it if some people don't find Good Fortune incisive enough or anti-capitalist enough or vicious enough, but I think the broader strokes are there if not always the finer ones (this is after all a film made by and starring millionaires, so there is bound to be some disconnect) and, for the intention - that of making a fantastical comedy - it largely succeeds.  

Few comedians succeed without struggling first, without having to pay their dues getting crap gigs for a meagre payout that barely floats them to the next one. Despite his early success at a younger age, Ansari still had to do this too. Ansari's stage persona has always had an affable nature that remained even as he grew in comedic stature, and his comedy has often had a streak of both starfucking and self-awareness, which makes him well suited to the role he cast himself in, as a guy with struggles who suddenly finds himself rich.  Arj's journey doesn't fully seem personal, but it does feel like a man trying to speak to something... and that something is class divides which may be something he's really struggling with (it's not fully evident in Arj's character, but is more evident in Rogen's Jeff).

 Reeves is a twitchy delight in this playing a bit of a dimwit angel, and it's such a perfect lane for him. The same awkward wooden boy qualities that make him a pretty terrible dramatic actor work so well for him as a comedic one when the role is shaped for him, and Ansari uses him perfectly. 

It's almost hard to remember when Rogen was just the stoner with the funny laugh, he's become such a titan of the industry at this point (I've lost track of how many movies and TV shows he's appeared in this year, not to mention how many he's directed and/or produced), but again, that side of him, that "him?" question that seems to come up needing him to prove himself in pretty much every role, makes him pretty much perfect to play a riches-to-rags story believably.

And, I mean, how does one not just get swoony over Kiki Palmer every time she's on screen. She's not used to her maximum potential here, not by a longshot (we'll get to that shortly), but when it comes to dream girl love interest casting it's seems obvious. 

Ansari had a bold shift from stand-up and sitcom star to a heralded figure in the Golden Age of Television with Master of None. His arty shifts into pseudo-French new wave and other subgenre exercises throughout the series were certainly showing a creative taking advantage of his opportunities and taking risks. I'm not sure there's a lot of that visual acuity here, though the references to Wim Wenders Wings of Desire were certainly not lost on me.

This isn't a rebel yell, this isn't a riot starter, it isn't a call to action... it's entertainment (I don't think we should be really looking to one percenters to start these movements). It's not trivial entertainment, but it's also not tossing bricks either. It's a witty protest sign at a rally, and that's okay. It's just nice to see a film like this again.

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Where Good Fortune tried to hit a message home about class discrepancies and how hard it is to survive in the modern economy, it only gets part of the way there in really exemplifying the struggle. One Of Them Days takes it the rest of the way, and is crazy entertaining to boot.

Kiki Palmer is in full command of the screen for the bulk of this film, grabbing you by the hair and dragging you along for her ride. The preternaturally charming, funny and endearing Palmer plays Dreux, an L.A. waitress struggling to make ends meet. She's just finished her early shift at the franchise diner and just wants to get some rest before her big interview at 4pm to hopefully become a franchise manager at her restaurant. She has the experience, the knowledge and the attitude needed, maybe just not the confidence.

Her best friend and roommate Alyssa (SZA) is her support, her crutch holding her up and pushing her forward. Alyssa is a bit of a free spirit with no committed profession, except being an artist but undervaluing her work. Alyssa also has a dirtbag boyfriend Keshawn who has been crashing rent free for months, but Alyssa is kind of powerless to resist him for...ahem...reasons. Dreux's rest is interrupted when her landlord informs her he never received the rent, and that she'll be out on the street by 6pm if he doesn't get it. Dreux gave it to Alyssa who gave it to Keshawn who suddenly disappeared (with all his sneakers).

And so the countdown is on. Dreux and Alyssa need to find Keshawn, and survive a crazy obstacle course of an afternoon in order to avoid being put out on the street. It seems at once both a trivial and Herculean task, but the tremendously sharp and witty script by Syreeta Singleton sets up the obstacles and set pieces and players all like dominoes and Keshawn's darting out the apartment is the first one to fall.

To talk about the events of the film is to spoil the process of discovery, but it's an effective script in highlighting just how the capitalistic systems set up in America are precisely there to keep the disadvantaged at a disadvantage and how these systems pits community against itself as people tried to crawl over each other to get whatever leg up they can get... all without ever being preachy about it. Even when it's shouted out by Katt Williams' Shameeka, a local character hanging outside of the payday loan place warning people about the evil and deceit inside, it's a comedic tour de force more than hitting you over the head with a message.

One Of Them Days is a superb example of the "one crazy day/night" movie, showing that strong characters with a specific point of view can take a well-worn genre and breathe new life into it. Palmer connects with everyone she meets on screen, even when it gets awkward, there's real chemistry there. She makes everything work to the point that it's hard to think of a single scene that doesn't.  While this is Palmer's star vehicle, for sure (and she shines so vibrantly), this is SZA's coming out party as an actress and she makes it seem effortless.  Palmer has chemistry with everyone, sure, but you need to believe that her and SZA have been best friends forever, and they sell it almost immediately and that sense of connection never wavers (their friendship is also the backbone of this film, so it needed to be rock solid, and it's diamond-strong).

Watching two people in such a desperate situation shouldn't be this much fun, but it is.

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The Peanut Butter Solution (aka Operation Beurre de Penottes) is the second film in producer Rock Demers "Tales for All" series and one of my favourite childhood treasures that's still every bit as weird and wonderful today to experience as it was when I was a child.  Ok, maybe it doesn't scare me as much as when I was 10, but this was mandatory viewing every time it was on the CBC when I was a kid.

As children, we often are attracted to what scares us, and that's kind of the crux of The Peanut Butter Solution. Just as I was drawn to watching this creepy, weird movie over and over again as a child, Michael (Matthew Mackay) is drawn to the smoldering remains of a burned down Montreal abandoned house where unhoused people used to hole up and may have died in the fire. Micheal and his best friend Connie (the delightful Siluck Saysanasy) go to investigate the house and in the process Michael sees something that scares him unconscious. Connie drags him home in a shopping cart. The next morning when Michael wakes up, his hair has fallen out as a result of the trauma of the scare, but he can't remember what scared him.

But having no hair is just as traumatic as the scare was, and he refuses to go to school. After his dad and sister acquire a wig for him, he tries it out and for a few days feels normal, until a soccer bully yanks it off his head (the shot of the glue going all stringy always upset me and grossed me out when I was little), and all the school kids chase him home, teasing him (where were the soccer coaches/ref/any adult at all?). The traumas never stop with this kid.

He's visited at night by the ghosts of the two unhoused individuals who died in the fire. Michael had paid a kindness to them once, and so they were paying him back, giving him the formulae for a hair-growth solution. Michael fudges the mixture with too much peanut butter and suddenly not only is his hair back but it's growing by meters throughout the day Connie sits behind him in class constantly trimming but it's so distracting Michael gets expelled. The next day, his hair dragging on the ground, he packs off and heads out to school in a wind storm screaming about how he just wants to learn and be normal. Its when he hides and tries to shelter from the wind storm that he's found by The Signor (Michel Maillot), his peculiar art teacher who got fired for being too severe.

The Signor kidnaps Michael, and then a dozen other kids. He sets up a sweatshop where Michael is chemically sedated with special yogurt and the other kids take trimmings of his hair and make magical paint brushes. When the Signor paints with them he creates paintings so realistic you can literally walk into them.

I don't know how long the Signor thought he could keep this whole operation going for it, but a couple of pre-teens (Connie and Michael's sister) sniff him out and bust his creepy operation.

I'm not sure how many of the "Tales for All" were shot in English, but I'm guessing there will be more in the series down the line and that Demers wasn't devoted to solely making French Canadian products.  I don't mind the English production, and for the most part the child actors here are pretty good (Alison Podbrey as Suzie, Michael's sister is exceptional) but the little bit of distance that translated subtitles provides tends to smooth over any shakiness.

This movie is such wonderful nonsense, the dream logic of it all is what makes it so magical, and so unsettling. Any story that deals with mass kidnapping is inherently upsetting, but this is a film that dives in the deep end of the trauma pool and can't figure out how to get out. The film begins with Michael missing his mother who has gone to Australia to deal with her recently deceased father's estate. Just being of an age and needing one's parent (when his dad, played by Michael Hogan despite being full of love isn't up to the job of comforting him) and not having it is its own trauma.

The story does give Michael resolution to two of his many, many traumas, but they are most assuredly going to haunt him for some time. I would love a Doctor Sleep-like follow-up to this.

Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar - Day 17: The Preacher's Wife

1996, d. Penny Marshall - Disney+

The Preacher's Wife is, at least on paper, the perfect remake. It takes a classic and perhaps even beloved film starring one of the brightest and most charismatic stars of its era, and brings it to a modern setting, adapted wholly to its environment and its characters, and stars one of the brightest and most charismatic stars of its era. If you're ever going to think "who's a good substitute for Cary Grant?", "Denzel Washington" is absolutely the right answer.

The thing about The Preacher's Wife is that the role Washington plays -- the angel Dudley -- may share the same name and vocation as the role played by Grant almost fifty years earlier in The Bishop's Wife, but they are not the same character. Just for starters, Washington's Dudley used to be human, and apparently not that all that long ago (possibly within the 20th century). He's been in the queue for an assignment on Earth for decades apparently and has finally been given a shot, to which he is absolutely elated. Grant's Dudley has been on assignment for millennia, apparently, he's seen it all and has an omnipotence that Washington's character doesn't. 

These (and other) differences aren't trivial, they shape the roles they play quite differently, and there's really no mistaking them for the same character. The same can be said for the rest of the players in the film. The titular Bishop and his wife are Henry and Julia, as are the titular Preacher and his wife, but that's where the similarities end.

The Preacher's Wife doesn't just redo what was done before beat by beat, note by note, it rebuilds the story and characters from the ground up. 

Where Bishop Henry had already moved on from his troubled parish and was having difficulties negotiating the building of a new place of worship, here the Reverend Henry (Courtney B. Vance, Final Destination 5) is still very much in his parish, and a core part of his community. But his troubles are that he cannot do enough to stop the troubles his community is having. The local youth shelter has closed down, the church is in financial straights while still well attended, the local orphanage has closed and Henry's son's best friend is being moved to be housed elsewhere, and a local youth he's helped before has been falsely accused of armed robbery. All these things, as well as just supporting the sick and elderly and destitute in his community, weigh on the Reverend, and these troubles wind up isolating him from Julia (Whitney Houston, The Bodyguard) and his 6-year-old son Jeremiah (Justin Pierre Edmund, in an absolutely adorable but so not saccharine or precocious performance).

Unlike Julia in The Bishop's Wife, here, naturally, the role has been bolstered to put Houston in the spotlight, and, of course, get her to use her greatest talent. There is a lot of Houston singing here, largely gospel, but a sequence of Dudley, as Henry's behest, taking Julia out dancing leads to Julia meeting an old friend (played by Lionel Richie) and goading her into performing a soulful, romantic ballad, which she of course nails, and sends Dudley swooning.  It's their return from this event that both sparks their attraction, but also fuels Henry's jealousy, both in a way that was never quite as present or potent in the original.

Henry here is being tempted away from his parish, his community by real estate mogul Joe Hamilton ("Than man is so oily you can fry chicken on his smile") as played by Gregory Hines (Wolfen). Hamilton wants to gentrify the neighborhood and upscale the church, with Reverend Henry becoming a broadcast-worthy preacher. As other members of the community start to fall under Hamilton's sway, so too does Henry, much to Julia's dismay.

Here, Julia doesn't want to just be Henry's wife, but his partner. Most of her input is subtle, punching up the choir and helping with distributing alms. But she has ideas, ideas that Henry doesn't even have time to hear in order to dismiss them. He's put her on the back burner, and it's the crux of the whole film... sort of.

And this is what I mean by The Preacher's Wife being the perfect remake on paper. It rebuilds the story, the characters, the world and it feels so rich and alive, and yet it also repeats so many of the problems of the original when it most certainly could have improved upon them. The biggest issue is about focus and perspective. Whose story is this? Dudley's? Julia's? Henry's? Jeremiah is our narrator, so is it his? This lack of focus once again makes it tough for the story to ever really click. Where Henry in the original was very much the third lead of the film, he's pretty much the primary here, but this means Dudley winds up disappearing for stretches, and used inefficiently.

Both films lack a strong central lesson that Dudley is trying to teach Henry... or maybe it's just that Dudley is a terrible teacher. Dudley is just there to help, but he should be helping Henry help himself, and in both films, too much is left to Dudley to directly intervene. Just as in The Bishop's Wife, here the reconciliation between Henry and Julia is kind of just one moment and doesn't feel big enough to hand-wave away the problems they were having. There's not enough grown-ups having conversations saying how they really feel and understanding each other to feel truly satisfying.

Also in both films, the romance, if you can call it that, between Dudley and Julia, is barely a thing. It's more of a thing in The Preacher's Wife (Julia tells her mom she's just window shopping, to which her mom says "Well, don't go shopping with money in your pocket! And you better not be putting anything in the layaway plan, either!" The incomparable Jennifer Lewis, everyone! Amazing in this film. She's also only 6 year older than Whitney, playing her mother...tsk tsk). 

The Preacher's Wife, I think, is a more engaging film than The Bishops Wife, but only by a narrow margin. They're complimentary in their own way, like they're in a shared universe where angels are sent to Earth to help, and these two angels just happen to have similar missions but in two very different communities and with very different people. Where I don't quite click with The Preacher's Wife is its increased focus of faith and devotion and worship. Gospel isn't really my thing, and, quite frankly Whiney's singing never was either. Since both are given such prominence, it's really the detractor for me when comparing the two. One's mileage may vary greatly on that front.

Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar - Day 15: The Bishop's Wife

 1948, d. Henry Koster - amazonprime

What exactly is The Bishop's Wife? Is it a romance about a love triangle? A faith-based Christmas story? An exploration of changing class and status? A comedy? A drama? 

Yes, to all of these, and yet, not really any of these at all. It's a story that doesn't quite know what it wants to be or what it wants to say, only just that it wants to say it.

Dudley (Carey Grant) is an angel who appears suddenly on the poorer side of town. He helps a blind man cross the road, stopping traffic as he does. He stops a runaway pram from getting run-over. He's a kind man with a beautiful face who knows everyone's name as if they were old acquaintances. 

He has appeared on Earth to help Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven), whose promotion to Bishop, in no small part thanks to wealthy dowager Mrs. Hamilton, has left him sort of at her mercy. His promotion has elevated him not just in ecclesiastical status, but also social, having moved across town to a different class of parishioners. Henry's wife, Julia (Loretta Young) may have moved with him, but she hasn't left the old neighbourhood out of her heart.

Henry's key objective is the building of a new church, one which isn't going to happen on its own dime. It will take much cow-towing and conceding to the wishes and demands of Mrs. Hamilton, whose designs are to seen the new facility be a shrine to her late husband moreso than to God.

Henry has lost himself in his advancement, and Dudley is there to attempt to show him the way back, to remind him of what really matters in both life and divinity, but Henry won't go willingly. Dudley inserts himself into Henry's world as his assistant, much to the delight of the female staff about the abode, being up front with Henry about who he is and why he is there...but the Bishop just can't believe it even when Dudley shows him signs (at one point he thinks him a demon).

So the angle Dudley takes is to spend time with the Mrs. and their daughter, showing them the attention and appreciation that's been lacking from the man of the house. Dining, dancing, skating, shopping, visiting old friends and old favourite places, Dudley shows Julia the world she's been missing, the life Henry's been neglecting, and it begins to upset Henry, pride and envy. Sins!

While it should be the wake up call he needs, it's not, really. It's only through Dudley's intervention with Mrs. Hamilton that she sees the selfishness and error in her ways, instead deciding to devote her money and attention to social issues instead of vainglorious pursuits. This frees Henry into making the only choice he can, to return to his old parish, to return to the people that need him most and miss him. And it allows Dudley to depart, but not first without a proclamation to Julia, a hint towards temptation (is he a devil?) but she resists and flees to her husband. Dudley smiles, and departs, to be forgotten, as at the end of any of his jobs...it's not about glory, but about doing good, and leaving a lasting effect on the people he touched.

For a 1940's film that centres around an angel and a bishop, The Bishop's Wife, is surprisingly not a film very concerned with religion. It's oddly contemporary in the way it uses the roles and the iconography and such for its own designs without really trumpeting faith or thumping the Bible much at all. Dudley might as well be an alien helping a corporate VP lost in his promotion for all this movie really cares about Christianity, and that suits me just fine having a total lack of conviction myself.

The problem with the film is it lacks focus. It doesn't know whose point of view to tell the story from. It's not Dudley, or Julia, or Henry, nor anyone else. It's named The Bishop's Wife so you would think Julia would be at the centre of the story, but she's not really. It was Henry who called for God's help, and Dudley was sent, but Henry spends most of the movie uncuriously wishing Dudley away, and not accepting his help, guidance or lessons. The rekindling of Henry and Julia is a subtle one, no great moment of revelation so much as both of them seeing Dudley as a temptation that would get in the way of their marriage and both realizing that is not what they want.

But Dudley's "wooing" of Julia never seems in earnest. It never truly seems like Dudley is ever actually in love with her. He loves her, like he seems to love everyone, and so the moment where he leans in for the kiss feels like a test for her, not a legit moment of Dudley seeking something else for himself.

For that matter, Julia isn't much of a temptation. There's little in the role that Loretta Young is playing that gives her much agency or vibrancy or vivaciousness. Beyond being pretty, she does so little to draw Dudley to her. Never is there a moment where there is something that is convincingly alluring to an angel who seems to have legitimately seen it all (Dudley's history spans thousands of years, apparently).

And if the whole point of the movie is for Dudley to help Henry, to show him the life he's been missing, the life he should be leading, the film never effectively gives us that progression for Henry. When Henry comes around, it's seemingly not of his own volition or awareness, and there's no grand heart-swell of Henry rekindling with Julia or finding the joy of parenthood. It's way too subtle and understated, in part Niven's incredibly reserved performance, and in part a script that didn't clearly plan its path efficiently or effectively.

Cary Grant is at his most congenial in this film, and he carries it on his back far more than he should have to, given how clear the pathway is for the story to walk on its own.