It's a Wonderful World

Not to be confused with that damn Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie, although this does star Jimmy Stewart. But here he's a private eye on the run from the cops while he tries to prove the innocence of a client before said client gets the chair. While on the lam, Stewart encounters a poetess played by Claudette Colbert, who decides, after some debate, to help him out. Stewart's not thrilled with that, but he ought to be since she's a lot smarter than he is.

Then again, he admits early in the film that the year before he had this private eye gig, he was going door-to-door selling electric belts, so it isn't as though he was an ace gumshoe.

So it's a romantic comedy, and while I can take or leave the romance aspect, it is pretty funny. Stewart tries to pretend to be a near-sighted Boy Scout Troop leader at one point, later he has to pretend to be an actor from Alabama. So if you ever wanted to hear Jimmy Stewart put on a fake Deep South drawl, here's your chance. The two cops in charge of pursuing him are a couple of chowder-heads, and get some pretty good lines to emphasize it.

I would say the search for the identity of the true murderer almost gets lost in the shuffle. Most of the movie is spent on Stewart and Colbert trying to get to where they need to be, while alternating between arguing, flirting, and trying to ditch each other, so the actual purpose of the journey is an afterthought. The fact that a man's life relies on them solving this absolutely gets lost. Although the movie uses that to good dramatic effect when Stewart reveals why he's trying so hard to solve this.

It kind of wastes the impact because it doesn't leave you hanging on whether the reason has caused Colbert to give up on him for more than a minute, but in that minute, it works very well.