Delayed Reaction: Sullivan's Travels

Premise: A Hollywood director decides to pretend he's poor for a while to better understand the downtrodden for his next movie.

I swear, most of the old movies I see fall into one of two categories:

1. They are incredibly long but I'm not sure how they filled the time with how little story there was.
2. They are short but somehow pack the story of three movies into them.

A lot of the big sweeping epics fall into the former category. The latter category tends to be comedies. His Girl Friday was one of those. Sullivan's Travels is certainly another. That story moves. Sadly, it moves at a downward trajectory by my measure.

I basically saw the movie because I've heard the opening scene quoted so much. That scene is really clever and funny. It would work word-for-word if inserted into a movie made today even. The movie never really matches that wit as it continues though. The premise also ages worse and worse by the day. It's basically a rich guy fetishizing what it's like to be poor. The message of the movie lands in the right place, but the way it gets there is downright patronizing.

I'm still working on getting better historical context for the movie. Maybe as I see more and more movies from the early 40s and before, I'll better appreciate the ways that the movie was ahead of it's time.

Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake are fine. Neither are on my list of go-to "Golden Age" performers, and from all indications, this is the movie that should've sold me on them the most. Oh well.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend