dish55

Barbara Stanwyck, sometimes underrated as an actress (four Oscar nominations and no wins) and always undervalued as a star, shows why she lasted so long - she could do anything. Usually cast as a mobster's tough tart or a hard-luck dame and everything in between, here she plays a first-class lady, a widowed mother of two, a fine upstanding citizen who lives in that Never-Never Land called the Upper Middle Class laughingly depicted by Hollywood as a place where women belong to country clubs, constantly appear dressed in mink and evening gowns, are constantly making grand entrances and exits and are forever worrying what the neighbors will think. Joan Crawford fit right into this nonsensical neighborhood once she joined Warner Bros. and may well have been offered this script but thankfully Stanwyck took the part and created from the ground up another unforgettable performance in a forgettable (but very popular in its day) film. The story is nothing special but oh! how Barbara dominates every scene she's in, and does it without really trying (or so it seems). While Davis and Crawford had a tendency to remind audiences that they were acting, Stanwyck just rolled up her sleeves and got the job done. Such truth in her work! Watching her is an electric experience, she connects with an audience like few stars had or have before or since. Splendid!

What could have been a low-key, extra-special slice of life story (featuring as it does a extra-special performance by the always extra-special JGL)is ruined by the unbelievable and crass performance of Seth Rogen who destroys any believability or good-will the story has built up every time he appears on screen. Movie-makers have got to realize a little bit of this fat-friend-with-the-dirty-mind-and-mouth-to-match goes a long way. Rogen has out-stripped his meager talents and worn out his welcome by now, and throwing such a putrid character in such a heart-warming story is a major mistake. Everyone else plays it on a realistic level - Anna Kendrick is wonderful as the therapist-in-training, and Anjelica Houston - well, what can I say? Joseph Gordon-Levitt positively lights up the screen every time he appears, but all too often he appears with the woefully charisma-challenged Rogen and, well, the movie and JGL's performance suffer accordingly.

There probably was no way to do the multi-leveled story lines justice except maybe in a ten-hour miniseries, but even so, what can account for Mandy Patemkin's daughter never growing older even though he has made three successful films since the start of the movie? Ditto James Olsen's son - both kids stay the same age throughout the picture. What they probably should have done (I hate to remake things as I'm watching them) is told the whole thing through Brad Douriff's eyes. It would have given the audience someone and something to focus on. I did think Elizabeth McGovern was a good choice as Evelyn Nesbit (certainly much better than Joan Collins in the campy 1955 film THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING)and Harold Rollins was wonderful in a poorly-written part, but Debbie Allen was wasted along with I hate to say it James Cagney, who looked mummified.