Once Upon a Honeymoon

Although there is a silly side to this movie, I really don't think that its only value is as a curiosity. In reality, it was a singular vehicle for Ginger Rogers to flex her acting muscles, instead of merely being a sidekick in a dance routine. She is something to behold in this movie. And, I maintain that if you are a Cary Grant fan, it's nothing to sit through this slightly confectionery film. It is practically astonishing that the Jewish issue was addressed in a movie made in 1942. Finally, it's worth pointing out that any average film from this period is Shakespearean compared to the dreck on offer most of the time these days.

Although the indifferent critical reception, and very mixed reviews here, made me a little nervous, the cast were good reason to see 'Once Upon a Honeymoon'. Am especially fond of Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers' partnership with Fred Astaire is legendary. Comedy mixed in with a serious subject, in a sensitive time period at the time, has been done frequently on film and although it varies in success there are a lot of great examples. Have also liked a lot a good deal of Leo McCarey's work.

Not 'Once Upon a Honeymoon' though. Whether it's his very worst is debatable, haven't seen everything of his, but it is to me a lesser effort of his and nowhere near his usual standard. Both Grant and Rogers have also been better, though neither fare too badly here and actually among the better assets. For better balances of well executed comedy and tastefully executed seriousness, look elsewhere other than 'Once Upon a Honeymoon' as that is one of its biggest problems. If people got more out of this, good for them but it didn't quite do it for me while thinking still that it is not that bad.

'Once Upon a Honeymoon' has good things. It is a well made film, the photography especially being nicely done. Robert Emmett Dolan's music has quirkiness and atmosphere. There are moments of amusement, like a few nice lines from Grant, and tension thanks to the menace of Walter Slezak.

Grant embodies urbane sophistication, something that he was unaparallelled in in cinematic history. Rogers to me seemed to have fun, and didn't seem over the top or phoned in. They have a sweet chemistry together and it's the romantic element that comes off best of the different tones the film tries to take on. The supporting cast are all competent and more, although the variable amount of screen time worked against some of them. Slezak's menacing baron comes off best and the character that makes the most sense.

It is a shame however that the script is very muddled and tries to do too much, the comedy generally lacks wit and when there is any in the more serious scenes (i.e. anything regarding Grant and Rogers implausibly being mistaken for being Jewish) it leaves a bitter aftertaste. Or at least it did to me and some others. The story never properly grabbed me and suffers badly from being tonally unfocused and too many jarring shifts in tone, which suggested a not knowing what it wanted to be vibe.

To me too, 'Once Upon a Honeymoon' runs on for too long with the early portion having drawn out parts suggestive of padding not always needed. So it meant that too much of the film drags and quite badly. Successful comedy is only sporadic and the tension is hardly there. Only the baron makes sense of the characters, the others and their behaviour further to the film's strangeness. Have not seen an ending this dumb in a long time, quite insultingly so, and it also felt abrupt. McCarey's direction is pretty bland and like he was not finding it easy balancing everything.

Summarising, a watchable curiosity but an oddity. 5/10

Comedy? I don't think so. Even Grant's charms can't save this one. A comedy set in Europe during WWII isn't impossible (see To Be Or Not To Be, also from 1942). But this one includes scenes with Hitler, and jokes about Nazis, not very funny I may add. The story is too ludicrous, the so-called jokes terrible. Whoever liked the movie should check is head. The ending is SO-Stupid! And what honeymoon? Forget it. Even worse than Penny Serenade. Beware. Read a book, eat, do something, anything else.

**SPOILERS** Combination 1930's screwball comedy and WWII Hollywood propaganda movie that has the Nazi's looking so ridicules even when their taking over all of Western Europe that you don't know if you should either laugh or cry as your watching it. Brooklyn showgirl and gold-digger Katie O'Hara, Ginger Rogers, has traveled to Vienna Austria to strike it big by lassoing in a rich Austrian baron. Katie hit's the bullseye with chubby but rich and well bred Baron Von Luber, Walter Slezak.

While Katie is planning to get married to the Baron American reporter Pat O'Toole, Cary Grant,is trying to get the big story, Brooklyn girl marries rich European Aristocrat, impersonates Katies tailor only to have the real one show up, after Pat took Katie's measurements, thus making a quick withdrawal from Katie's bedroom. It's at that moment that the Nazi's enter Vienna incorporating Austria into the German Reich.

Pat smitten by Katie and ignoring her soon to be husband starts to follow her and the Baron to Prague Czechoslovakia. Just then just like in Vienna the Nazi's suddenly march into town with their Fuhrer Adolph Hitler leading the parade. We see the big man himself, Adolph Hitler, all five foot eight inches of him in newsreels and being played actor Carl Ekberg throughout the film.

It's not until the Baron travels together with Katie and Pat tagging along to Warsaw Poland that we get an inkling of just what he's all about. It turns out that the Baron is the advance man for Hitler's vaunted Whermacht and Luftwaffe. In that he softens up every country that he stays in making them easy for the German Military to invade and take over. In Poland just before the German invasion the Baron sells the Polish military commander General Boneiski, Albert Bassermann, a load of new and state of the art automatic weapons only to later find out that they don't work. Making it a piece of cake for the Whermacht to overrun the Poles and capture Warsaw.

It's during the bombardment of Warsaw that both Pat and Katie come up with the idea of having her declared a fatality of war which in return has her marriage to the Baron no longer valid. This, lucky guy, has handsome and debonair Pat O'Toole, well really Cary Grant, get a crack at Katie as her new and fellow American husband.

The film starts to get serious when after both Pat and Katie run into the Baron in Paris France, another country that the Baron helped his Fuhrer Hitler to take over, this after spending some time in a German concentration camp on the suspicion of them both being Jewish. Katie switched her US passport with her Jewish maid so she and her two young children can get out of Nazi occupied Europe.

Pat cooks up a scheme to get a job as a broadcaster for the German propaganda ministry, this is in 1940 before the US was at war with Nazi Germany, to give him and Katie, whom the Baron had since lost interest in,time to get new passports and get the first boat out of Nazi occupied France and back to the USA. Pat now really getting under the Baron's skin in his first and only broadcast to America.Pat's on the air hysterics almost has the over-sized and arrogant jerk shot and killed by the Gestapo by him announcing that the loyal and obedient Baron is planning to overthrow the Fuhrer, Hitler, himself and take over the government! All in jest of course. The real kicker in Pat's hilarious broadcast is revealing, again all in jest of course, that the pure blooded Aryan Baron Von Luber is actually married to a Brooklyn Jewish woman! The identity that Katie has on her passport that she switched with her Jewish maid. That had the big and sputtering Nazi buffoon almost burst one of his pure blooded Aryan blood vessels!

The Baron now back in the good graces of the Fuhrer, whom he was accused by Pat of trying to do in, is given a chance to redeem himself by traveling on an ocean-liner to America and do his thing undermined the country and set up the land of the free and home of the brave for the next Nazi conquest. It's then when he runs into his ex-wife,the Fuhrer had annulled his marriage, Katie on deck and the rest of the movie, as well as the Baron himself, is soon to become history.

You don't know how to take this movie since it's about a very serious subject, WW II, but at the same time it doesn't seem to take itself seriously at all. It's as if the film is a precursor to movies and TV shows of post-World War Two goofy and bumbling Nazi's like in the movie "The Producers" and the 1960's TV comedy "Hogan's Heroes".

It's a war film, a bit of a horror film, a code busting romantic comedy, and a drama. In 1938 Austria, journalist Patrick O'Toole (Cary Grant) comes to American Kathy O'Hara (Ginger Rogers) to let her know that her future husband, the Baron Franz Von Luber (Walter Sleazak), is a Nazi. Except the conversation does not seem serious - ever.

O'Toole flirts shamelessly with O'Hara. She flirts back. But she does marry the Baron. And there are numerous other meetings later on where in one case O'Toole just decides to order a big lunch from room service in Poland, take his clothes off in the Baron's suite and borrow his pajamas, and take a nap. And each time Grant and Rogers meet they continue their flirtation and then Ginger goes back to her husband, while romantic comedy music plays. Then Rogers just suddenly decides to leave the Baron for Grant. They traipse across Europe looking for a way back to America - even getting stuck in a concentration camp for awhile that inaccurately looks more like Juvenile hall.

For a war movie there are really no serious dramatic confrontations. It all plays out like The Awful Truth combined with the Hope/Crosby Road movies except in War torn Europe and the whole thing is off putting.

How can a film with an acclaimed director - Leo McCarey - bomb this badly, especially with a talented cast. The production values are top notch - this is not some Ed Wood film, so in fact it is worse than one. In an Ed Wood film you see things done wrong - poor and silly art design, laughably bad dialogue, poor cinematography. So this even fails as a bad film, because it is expertly presented, but it manages to be weird and boring to the point it is just annoying.