Merrily We Live (1938)

What is with that title? Merrily We Live? There is just something wrong with that! Also, the entire cast walks arm-in-arm singing a theme song during the OPENING credits. That is gay gay gay and I, for one, think it's awesome that you can still tell a movie that is trying too hard to be a hit seventy years later.



This followed another movie I watched on TCM this weekend and I watched it while baking Whoopie Pies (recipe from Cooks Country). Maybe it's Billie Burke weekend (props to Trevor for correctly identifying her as Glinda the Good Witch from the original Wizard of Oz - I watched three movies without picking up on that...what's the matter with me?).

Anyhow, I loved this one. People faint through the whole movie and it is one of those thirties movies where we make fun of the crazy rich people which I have a feeling was supposed to take the edge off the Great Depression by making the rich seem ridiculous and at the same time letting you glimpse their lifestyle. Then again, those crazy rich people is still a popular theme today (Monster-in-Law, anyone? Wedding Crashers?).

There is a great butler character and a great zany younger sister (I love zany younger sisters like Meet Me In St. Louis' Tootie and Philadelphia Story's Margaret) but the romance is really great since the female lead starts out thinking she's kicking yet another of her mother's charity cases out of the house before he can wreak havoc and ends thinking that the love of her life is dead. In between they go through about a dozen different scenarios, all very entertaining. I love this kind of thing where you are never thinking about the lead characters falling in love but about the comic scenario they are caught up in and then before you know it, you realize you are sold on the love story as well.

Would watch again, in fact, already rewound to re-watch some scenes which I missed while baking Whoopie - I said BAKING you pervert.

Four Stars.