Romance e Fantasia

Claudette Colbert and John Wayne star in this lightweight comedy about an authoress who may not know enough about men to write about them. Her first book is a smash hit, but John Wayne scrutinizes it a bit, when he meets Claudette, not knowing she wrote it. He and his pal Don DeFore make a nice pair of guys to hang out with, and he and Claudette have good chemistry and repartee, but somehow the last 30 minutes goes off course and keeps this from being a very fulfilling movie experience. They're all good company and they have quite a few madcap escapades together, but things just don't fall into place as they should and the film tends to wander and go on too long. But if you get a chance to see Without Reservations, it's enjoyable and undemanding entertainment for almost two hours.

Hello, I have loved this movie since I was 10 in 1947. I love John Wayne and Claudette Colbert in everything they do. This is such a cute, fun and romantic comedy it makes a person want to really "be there". It reminds me of "It happened One Night" with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, from a few years earlier. I love that movie, also.

Such fun! Thank you for listening. Florence Stockton Reno, Nevada

"Without Reservations" is a cute but canned knock-off of "It Happened One Night" (also with Colbert) -- a road picture pitting the sexes against each other and then against the elements of a screwball universe. Though very flimsy in plot structure, Colbert and Wayne end up as interesting foils. Colbert puts out with her usual impeccable timing, urbane wit and unique, feminine charm. It strikes one that Wayne is not left behind in her proverbial comedic dust, a testament to the plain fact that he was actually a fine actor masquerading as a big lug, and moreover capable of playing comedy.

For any fellow "reactionaries" there is some good dialogue delivered by Wayne against Progressivism and in favor of freedom, which, except for its brevity, might as well have been lifted directly from a James Edward Grant script. Unfortunately these ideas (symbolized by the Wayne character) are categorized as the non-thinking position, but nonetheless they are involved in the overall plot resolution.

In all, the film means well but doesn't deliver, and the actors take in the slack where possible.

Many in the Hollywood elite belittled John Wayne. To get back at him for his Americanist views, liberals panned his movies and acting ability. If you have seen "The Quiet Man" or "The Searchers" or "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" or "The Sands of Iwo Jima" amongst many others, you already know that John Wayne could indeed act.

Watch "Without Reservations." My family loves John Wayne but who would have thought he could do comedy? And then do it well?

"Without Reservations" is a funny, amusing, delightful movie which is one of my wife's favorite (a New York City liberal by the way). Get a big bowl of popcorn. Sit back with your family and enjoy a lighthearted adventure. Cobert and Don Dafore are perfectly cast.

Claudette Colbert chases a soldier "Without Reservations" in this 1946 film which also stars John Wayne, Don DeFore, and Ann Triola, with cameos by Louella Parsons, Cary Grant, Jack Benny, and Delores Moran as themselves.

Colbert plays a best-selling author, Christopher Madden, who has written a book about the world post-war - it looks to be a combination of "Gone with the Wind" and "Atlas Shrugged." En route by train to Hollywood to do the screenplay, she is extremely distressed to learn that Cary Grant will not be available to do the movie version.

She is writing a telegram to the producer when she comes face to face with her fictional hero in the flesh. He's a soldier named Rusty (Wayne) going to San Diego with his pal, Dink (DeFore). She doesn't tell them her identity, giving her name as Kit Klatch.

Kit decides she has to have Rusty star in the film so instead of boarding the train that will take her to L.A., she gets on the train going to San Diego. This leads to all sorts of adventures for the threesome, and it's obvious that Kit and Rusty, despite very opposing political views, have fallen in love.

Colbert is delightful as usual, and DeFore, kind of a Jack Carson type, is always pleasant to watch. The surprise for some will be John Wayne who's not riding a horse or wearing a cowboy hat. Frankly, this writer has always preferred him that way. I'm not a particular fan of westerns, and the plainclothes Wayne seems handsomer and less stiff somehow.

Here, he's playing the role of someone whose beliefs are close to his own in real life, i.e., somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, while the Colbert character is a socialist. Tall and handsome, he does the romantic scenes well; one wishes he'd stayed out of the saddle more often.

This is a light, fun comedy that takes place in a world that, like Kit, doesn't quite know which direction to take post-World War II. Seventy-four years later, we still haven't figured it out, and "Without Reservations" remains an entertaining film.