Not to be confused with the movie of the same name with Matt Damon and Jon Voight, thank goodness. This one is set on a drought-riddled farm in the early 20th Century Midwest.
Katherine Hepburn plays the plain (they use that word a lot) daughter, who has not found a guy interested in her, that she's also interested. Her father H.C. (Cameron Prudhomme) insists there's nothing wrong with her, and she's beautiful, and she'll find someone. Her younger brother Jim (Earl Holliman), a hot-tempered idiot, insists that to get a man, she's got to act the way that makes a man want to be got. Meaning act air-headed and compliment their height, or their clothes. Her other brother Noah, played as a sour-faced pragmatist by Lloyd Bridges, says she needs to accept she's just plain, and that she'll end up an old maid. But hey, he's just telling it like it is. Thanks a lot, Captain Bringdown. I see why you're also single.
Into all this comes Burt Lancaster, playing Starbuck, a huckster who insists that for just 100 dollars, he will make it rain within 24 hours. Hepburn and Bridges insist it's hokum, the father and Jim and all for it. The dreamers take it, and Starbuck sets to work. Since he's got 24 hours, he spends some time trying to get Hepburn to like him, too, and when she refuses in the face of his charm, says she's got no dreams in her and that no one will ever like her as a woman, because she doesn't see herself as a woman.
OK, lacking in tact there. No wonder he's had to run from more towns than the guy that sold the Monorail to Springfield. At one point he tells her you have to hold onto dreams, tell yourself it's black, even when your eyes say it's white. Is that what the people insisting Trump won the election are doing? Holding onto their dreams?
Lancaster gets the fun role, dispensing truth bombs and bullshit with equal charm and energy. Hepburn feels wasted, honestly. She's fully capable of being a charming, engaging character, but it's all shrill yelling and self-doubt.
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