A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it seems to have a decent reputation (it was included in ‘The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made’ selected by the New York Times, among other things), I thought I might as well check it out. To be honest, I was at first slightly worried and I thought there was no way that something so quaint could appeal to me. Furthermore, it is pretty obvious that it was based on a play since most of the action was taking place in the house of the Day family which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but there is no way that this story really required almost 2 hours of running time. And, yet, somehow, the damned thing still worked after all. Indeed, at first, I thought Clarence Day Sr. was just way over-the-top but I have to admit that the guy grew on me after a while. Eventually, it was above all thanks to William Powell who managed to deliver here such a fine and perfectly calibrated performance. Even thought you might think that the sole purpose of this character was to be fun and entertaining, he was actually much more complex than that. At the same time, you had to understand why everyone in his family feared his tantrums but you had to believe that they also deeply loved him in spite of his major mood swings. Finally, he had to be a believable character and not just some oversized caricature. Unfortunately, the other characters were not so well developed as they were basically only there to interact with Clarence Day Sr. At least, it was pretty neat to see a young Elizabeth Taylor at the beginning of her career and I was really surprised to find out that she was only 15 years old at the time. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t blow me away, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.