We're Rich Again

WE'RE RICH AGAIN is about a wacky family of rich deadbeats who are trying to marry off one of their daughters to a rich man before the creditors take away what's left of their fortune. As a result, the family patriarch, Grant Mitchell, spends most of the film avoiding a process server (Edgar Kennedy). Additionally, the mother (Billie Burke) spends almost all the film whining and crying while her children run about like spoiled brats.

While there are many other films I could compare WE'RE RICH AGAIN to, two films with almost the exact same plot which were far better are MERRILY WE LIVE and MY MAN GODFREY. All three films involve daffy rich families which are having domestic and financial troubles and all three result in a finale where everything is magically fixed and everyone lives happily ever after. However, the other two films are light years better than WE'RE RICH AGAIN. Why, well because WE'RE RICH AGAIN is frequently very, very annoying. Unlike the wacky but lovable families in these other films, the family in WE'RE RICH AGAIN are just annoying and after a while I just wanted them to go away--and in some cases (the annoying Billie Burke and Marian Nixon) I wanted them to die! They were just too annoying to be likable and unfortunately, the film was just written very poorly--providing little comedy or incentive to keep watching it.

By the way, Olympic swimming champ Buster Crabbe plays a guy who is, not surprisingly, a fan of swimming and diving. He says absolutely nothing during 99% of the film--just swimming and splashing and diving like an idiot. However, in the last moments of the film, he is given some excellent lines that just appear out of nowhere.

It's a setup used in more than one 1930s comedy: the once-prosperous family living in a huge house and enjoying expensive tastes but going broke fast. In this case, Grant Mitchell is the perpetually exasperated husband and Billie Burke his slightly wacky wife.

One grown daughter is serious-minded and about to be married, while the other daughter is wild and fun-loving and does crazy things like dragging home Buster Crabbe in swimming trunks.

Joan Marsh and Gloria Shea are fine as the contrasting daughters; Reginald Denny is solid as always as Marsh's wealthy fiancé, who may bring some much-needed cash into the family; Edna May Oliver is hilarious as the polo-playing grandmother.

The plot starts out slowly but picks up steam with the arrival of Marian Nixon as Cousin Arabella, who talks nonstop and stirs up trouble on multiple fronts.

Despite lots of fast talk, there really isn't that much great dialog...however, the characters do grow on you, especially the nutty but charming Marian Nixon and persistent fiancé Reginald Denny.

It's nothing too exciting but it's certainly pleasant enough...and Crabbe's surprising bit at the end really is cute.

This is the story of a prosperous man who tries to extricate his wealthy family from the doldrums. This movie is based on the play by Alden Nash in which Reginald Denny played a vacillating matrimonial object (groom) and Joan Marsh the prospective bride and Billie Burke as her mother and Grant Mitchel as the depressed ex-millionaire father. Veteran actress Edna May Oliver is really cracking as the polo playing grandmother, who is also very interfering and sometimes annoying in a funny sort of way. They are in finer mettle and everyone pitches in to "rescue" them from a court clerk who wants to serve legal papers for the bills Grant Mitchell owes. The film is supposed to be off-beat comedy and a screwball slapstick, but it does not go well and the film falls short of a first rate comedy.

Conventional screwball comedy, from a conventional play, about an ill-starred society wedding, in which the financially beleaguered mother (Billie Burke, doing her usual thing) and father (Grant Mitchell) hope to reclaim some lost wealth by marrying off their practical-minded daughter (Joan Marsh) to a rich twit (Reginald Denny). Other hangers-on include Edna May Oliver, not doing her usual thing at all, as a vigorous, boy-loving, polo-playing grandma, and Marian Nixon as a tongue-rattling cousin from Texas ("West Texas," she keeps correcting everybody). Nixon was usually a conventional leading lady, but she's more than up to the task of playing an annoying busybody, and she's the best thing in the film. There are some diverting plot twists and surprises, and the liquor and wisecracks flow pretty freely for a just-post-Code talkie. The director, William A. Seiter, did better work and worse work in a long career, but this is a fun screwball effort, with family dynamics echoed in later sitcoms and some good slapstick.

Fans of Edna Mae Oliver will want to see this, but I think they will be disappointed. The only character that is well played out is "the cousin from Texas". Everybody else get a few good lines and perhaps absurd situations, but little else. Oliver is cast as a polo playing grandmother, and one might hope this would be very funny, but it is not. "We're Rich Again" certainly deserves to be called "screw-ball", but not a comedy.