ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Steven Torrey Certainly Grant/Hepburn, Tracy/Hepburn, Hope/Crosby made better screwball comedies and broke the mold. But this is hilarious for its own reasons, not the least of which is Grant's skill with deadpan comedic shtick. And I swear, if Irene Dunn isn't intentionally channeling Katherine Hepburn in a few places--just close your eyes and you can hear Katherine Hepburn through Irene Dunn--well that is just comedic gold.What keeps this from being truly excellent screwball comedy is the dark undertone Gail Patrick brings to her role as the second Mrs. Arden. Gary Grant does not love her in the same he loves the first Mrs. Arden. Their passion for each other comes though while Grants affection for Gail Patrick might best be described as annoyance with her, not affection even before Irene Dunn reappears after seven years absence. Clearly, this is not funny for Gail Partrick, she is the jilted "other woman" to Grant's unintentional bigamy and there is no getting around that dark undertone, despite the inherent comedy. It's sorta of like, in ten years you'll see the comedy, but now endure the pain. But it is a good comedic romp despite all that. Somewhere I read, Gail Patrick expressed the thought she needed a love interest to balance the film but others thought differently. I think Gail Patrick was right. Perhaps a developed love interest with Randolph Scott and her would have changed the undertone. As it is, Randolph Scott is also in love with the first Mrs. Arden (Irene Dunn), after being stranded on an island together for seven years, but love wins out and the first Mrs. Arden and Mr Arden are reunited in holy wedlock. So both Gail Patrick and Randolph Scott end up empty handed.But it is an excellent film for the genre, non-the-less.

jimprideaux2 I thought the funniest scenes involved the judge, the front desk manager, the insurance agent and the Randolph Scott character.As someone else said Gail Patrick was more or less a prop - no personality good or bad. Irene Dunn couldn't make up her mind whether her character was in a comedy or a drama. Cary Grant thought he was in a home movie and enjoyed making faces at the camera.The main character just didn't behave as if they were in the situation they were supposed to be in -- wife lost at sea for years, husband not knowing what to do - really? Also, lets not tell the kids but just kinda bring them in as a joke.Little snappy dialogue and something off with the timing and delivery.Watching it I thought this was not the Cary Grant from His Girl Friday and Arsenic and Old Lace.

JohnHowardReid "My Favorite Wife" (1940) is an extremely difficult film for a professional critic to evaluate, as he or she knows just what a complicated and lengthy process movie-making entails. Randolph Scott does not appear in this movie by accident, or because he simply happened to be free. His relationship was so well-known that John Farrow cleverly points it out in a short subject about horse racing that he directed in the mid-1930s. Frankly, I don't like Grant, the man, either, but I particularly dislike Scott, who used to be my hero – but there's nothing worse than a feeling that you've been betrayed, and even worse, made a sucker of! You could argue that it is quite wrong to judge actors against the standards you would apply to anyone else. You have to make an exception for actors is the general rule. Why? Why should actors be excepted? The answer to this question generally is "because they are special." And why are people like Grant and Scott special? Because the army won't have anything to do with them either! Okay, let's put all that feeling of uneasiness aside and just judge the movie by what we see on the screen, and not by what happens after the director says, "Cut!" In this respect – just judging the movie by what we see on the screen – we are asked to believe that a reasonably young, extremely vigorous man and a healthy, sexy, very attractive woman lived together on a small, otherwise deserted tropical island for over seven years and never once had intercourse! Come on, fellas! That is surely the most ridiculous scenario I've ever heard in my life! It says much for the movie makers' skills that, despite all its drawbacks, the movie is still quite entertaining. This is partly due to the fine support cast, particularly Granville Bates (the aseptic judge), and Donald MacBride (the browbeaten hotel clerk).

jc-osms I played this to myself on a long flight back from a winter sun holiday and the near 90 minutes it took up simply (pardon the pun) flew by. I love the screwball comedy "genre" and will be endeavouring this Christmas holiday to seek out as many examples as I can, but I doubt many of them will beat this Leo McCarey production directed by young hot-shot (at the time) Garson Kanin.The premise is as daffy as you would expect but boy do Cary Grant (at his effortless best) and one of his most supreme comic foils Irene Dunne run with it.I laughed out loud many times in the first thirty minutes and anxiously looked at my watch wondering where the story and laughs were going to come for the next 60 minutes but it just kicked on with Dunne's hilarious attempt to hoodwink Grant as to the hunkiness (or lack of same) of her seven year companion on their desert island and the easy introduction of Randolph Scott as the All-American athlete she actually hunkered down with.The timing of all concerned, particularly the leads of course, is near perfect throughout, the comedic situations hilarious (bookended by a courtroom scene with a great turn by Granville Bates as an incredulous judge - an idea so good that Peter Bogdanovich lifted it almost wholesale for his 1972 homage "What's Up Doc") and climaxing in a homage of its own to the one that started it all, the famous "Walls Of Jericho" scene in Gable & Goddard's "It Happened One Night" and of course its own Grant / Dunne predecessor "The Awful Truth".I keep coming back to Grant and Dunne as the keystones to the film's success. Both separately (Grant in his interplay with the hotel manager during extended avoidance of new, wholly undeserving bride Gail Patrick, perhaps the only actor in the film who fails to catch the arch mood of the piece) and Dunne (when she affects accents of contemporaries Hepburn and Davis to devastating comic effect) but especially together - these two play off each other to the manner born.Even the scenes with their kids don't grate, there's admirably little recourse to the use of traditional slapstick and the way this sex-farce pushes the envelope out at the censor (especially Grant's preening himself with women's clothing and that ending when you know he's about to become literally "Bad Santa") just takes the biscuit.A sheer delight, from start to finish.