A Lady Takes a Chance

I love Jean Arthur. That voice! Distinct... kinda nasal but not annoying... and intelligent yet unarrogant. And she's cute despite not being a traditional forgettable beauty.

John Wayne is relatively young here, still attractive and ungrizzled, and so he still makes for a good prince in this cowboy-meets-city girl fairytale. And the movie does start off that way - very charming and romantic - but of course it doesn't last, since what kind of a movie would it be if the boy and girl lived happily ever after after 15 minutes.

So it's too bad then that it goes downhill from there, when the couple starts encountering forced obstacle after forced obstacle and lame joke after lame joke. It's only by the grace of its charming stars that this movie rises a notch above mediocrity.