My Favorite Wife (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

My Favorite Wife (1940) – G. Kanin

Reunion of the leads from Leo McCarey’s wonderful The Awful Truth (1937) although this time directed by Garson Kanin.  In the previous screwball comedy, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne agreed to divorce but gradually realised they still loved each other (after they have other partners in tow, of course). Here, playing different characters, Grant remarries after Dunne is apparently lost at sea – when she returns, on the afternoon of the wedding (to Gail Patrick), Grant finds himself wanting to (having to?) get out of his new marriage. That is, until he discovers that Dunne wasn’t shipwrecked alone for seven years but instead had hunky Randolph Scott for company (in his pre-Western days). Of course, Dunne and Grant are really in love and Scott and Patrick are doomed to lose out.  Thus, it’s a similar funny premise and dynamic – but somehow things don’t catch fire as they did in the first film.  Instead, Grant seems to be underplaying a bit too much in contrast to Dunne’s warmer glow; the pace also feels too slow for screwball (although perhaps the laughs are supposed to creep up on you).  At any rate, it’s a notch below the best of the genre.  If you haven’t seen The Awful Truth, by all means watch that first!