Tom, Dick e Harry

There are so many great films in the comedy, romance and fantasy genres individually and there are some great ones that combine all three. It is interesting when any film combines all three, and luckily the three do gel well together and when done well the effect is not tonally muddled or disjointed. Another interest point was seeing Ginger Rogers, most famous for her legendary dance partnership with Fred Astaire, in one of her non-dancing roles.

While falling short of being a great film, 'Tom, Dick and Harry' did entertain and charm me as an overall whole. Much more so than the simplistic title indicates. Not everything comes off well, with one problem being major enough sadly to stop me from getting fully invested in the film. The reason for the above average rating though is because there are a lot of good things in 'Tom, Dick and Harry', and those good things manage to be so good.

Am going to begin with what doesn't quite work. One doesn't really see this type of film for their stories, where one expects them to be lacking in surprises, very flimsy and with contrivances and silliness overkill. 'Tom, Dick and Harry' is no exception, with pretty much all of those things. Plus an ending that wraps things up too neatly.

More problematic though is that one never fully warms to the lead character, and we are talking about the character and not Rogers, a very unsubtle one and difficult to empathise with, at times we are even irritated. Consequently, it is neither fully easy to invest in the relationships or what her final decision and reasoning are.

However, there is a lot to enjoy still. Despite having problems with the character, Rogers herself is actually marvellous, throwing herself into the role with sparkling comic timing and forthright commitment while injecting some charm. The male characters could have done with more development perhaps, but the titular characters are all well played. Especially Burgess Meredith as Harry. A pleasant surprise too was how Phil Silvers managed to make an obnoxious character amusing and surprisingly endearing, two words that usually don't belong in the same sentence as that. The direction has energy and the right lightness of touch and doesn't feel heavy or static.

It looks very nice as a film, especially Rogers' clothes (which she looks stunning in) and the imaginative photography in the enchanting and wonderfully weird dream sequences. The music fits well tonally and doesn't intrude. Throughout the dialogue sparkles in its wit and there are more than a fair share of funny, if not quite hilarious, moments that come rolling fast. The story is very flawed, but at least it didn't feel dull or strained to me and had a nice light on the feet energy.

On the whole, not great but pretty entertaining in its own way. 6/10

Certainly an adequately charming entertainment, although Ginger - an actor I enjoyed in many of her films - piles on the "barely legal" action a bit too thick, and some of the business with the wealthy part of the trio borders on the unsavory. The domestic bliss dreams are pleasantly looked forward to, and Burgess Meredith is (particularly in the diner scene) surprisingly sprightly and focused, as he advocates the working man's utopia, which must have been close to his Socialist heart. It ain't Noel Coward, and George Murphy is a stump as usual, but all in all, a pleasant enough way to waste a little time.

This is one of Ginger Rogers best films of all time. Here we see her trying to find the man of her dreams. She thinks she knows what she wants but does she really?? One by one she runs into these three men who are each special to her in their own way, but she must decide on which one of them she wants to live her life with. The dream sequences are very funny and add to the sheer joy of the film. You'll love the ending!

This film gives us three killer performances, Rogers of course, George Murphy and Burgess Meredith. The others actors are good as well. This is a funny heart warming movie that doesn't disappoint. If you have a chance to see or get this movie, DO IT!!

Ginger Rogers plays Janie, a girl who is not only incredibly beautiful (even as a brunette), sweet and charming. But a girl who has three of the lovliest men after her, She must choose between a millionaire, a car salesman and a mechanic, you'll never guess who wins. This film is filled with fun and sentiment from start to finish, Ginger is great as ever but she has her film stolen from her by the lovely and charming Burgess Meredith. Meredith is the strange mechanic, who loves nothing more than fun except Janie and will do anything to get either.

George Murphy is good in an early role as the car salesman and when He has to drive "prospective buyer" Harry (Meredith) and Janie to a lovers point the screen fills with anger. Dick is the millionaire and he remains pretty anonymous, with little charachterisation by alan marshall.

Overall this film is hopelessly enjoyable and hard to dislike

The expression "Tom, Dick and Harry" is a commonly-used colloquialism in English, meaning "everybody" or "anybody", but this film is about three men who just happen to have those names. The main character is Janie, a young woman who works in a telephone exchange and who has the sort of obliging personality which means she just can't say "no" to anybody, especially a good-looking young man. So it happens that she ends up engaged to three men from three different social backgrounds at the same time, middle-class car salesman Tom, working-class garage mechanic Harry and upper-class Dick, the son of the local millionaire. All three are young and good-looking, but all have their drawbacks; Tom is a bit too staid and conservative, Harry a bit too eccentric and Dick a bit too smooth and slick.

There's not really a lot more to the plot than that, apart from waiting to see which of the three men Janie will eventually end up marrying. In real life, of course, no woman would ever behave like this unless she were either a heartless flirt or not quite right in the head, but this is a screwball comedy, a film genre which acknowledges the existence of real life but does not consider itself bound by the rules and conventions that prevail there. It is, however, a tribute to Ginger Rogers' comedic talents that she manages to make her character seem not only plausible but also reasonably sympathetic.

Even in 1941 this film was probably not seen as anything more than a light-hearted bit of trivia, although it does manage a serious bit of political comment when a cinema audience are shown booing a newsreel showing Hitler. (The film was made before Pearl Harbor, but Hollywood had declared war on the Third Reich long before Washington followed suit). It is made in the "filmed theatre" style popular for low-budget films of the period- more dialogue than action, most scenes taking place indoors and everything seemingly filmed on one camera with no cross- cutting or tricky camera work. Today it is largely forgotten, but Ginger manages to invest it with enough period charm to make it (just about) worth watching. 6/10