The original 1945 blockbuster megahit starred Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan who sings, Cuddles Szakall and Sydney Greenstreet. It melds the classic thirties screwball to the added pizazz of the world war two era in which big names not necessarily experienced in the genre topped the cast list. Other than a farmhouse without what we know around here to be a generic period kitchen seating at least twenty its depiction of the personal camaraderie, period charm and busy often sophisticated life of New York's wealthier and more sophisticated semirural exurbs seems on target for even the millennium. The comic relief scenes of mixed up babies, a crooner melting a hard boiled potential partner and a runaway horse and cow add period charm which is still dynamite seventy years later. This 1992 remake certainly has star power as Arnold Schwarzenegger directs Dyan Cannon, Tony Curtis and Kris Kristofferson each of whom shine on camera. The period charm, genuine tranquility and upscale sophistication of this wealthy semirural exurban Connecticut setting is not correctly filmed because the recently built house lacking period charm seems in the middle of nowhere, the long time neighbors in no way supporting or socializing with each other. The large house in which much of the film is set seems rented in what we around here might consider as the not far from the city burbs. The sexually tinged shots and lowbrow physical comedy building a logical storyboard is anything BUT classic screwball which jumps in no believable order from physical comedy to period charm to budding romance with a purposely tacked on ending which in no way ties up the threads of the plot. Well enough constructed to sit through but not to watch again.
Review of Christmas in Connecticut
