YES SIR, THAT'S MY BABY (1949)

If there's anybody out there looking for a good example of "movie logic", then look no further than YES SIR THAT'S MY BABY.

College football star Donald O'Connor is forbidden by his wife (Gloria DeHaven) to play football.  And what's the reasoning behind her forbidding?  Well, one of her female professors had a failed romance with the football coach back years ago and she's still bitter about it.  Even worse is other young mothers have taken up the cause and forbidden their football studs from playing.  Now the entire football program is at stake!!!  Oh, no!  Will this be the end of football at Granger College?  Will there be some singing?  Maybe a few small dance numbers and one mildly impressive tap dance number at a laundromat?  Will Jack Overman make a cameo?  Will there be a lot of baby crying?  Will there be a big game at the end?  Will the romance between the professor and the coach be rekindled?  Will the baby for whatever reason be the celebrated hero of the game in spite of the fact that all he did was sit on the sidelines and scream his fucking brains out?  Will there be male cheerleaders?  Will somebody put on a hat full of water?  You'll just have to watch for yourself to find out!  Or not, it really wasn't that entertaining.

There were a few sparks of life in the musical numbers and the scenes between Donald and Gloria, but the rest of the film was pretty silly and the big game at the end was just ridiculous and made no sense at all...Donald actually changed a diaper between plays!  Alright for a one-time watch (if you're into films from the 1940's), but my biggest entertainment came from the background shots, the clothing/hairstyles and the dated views on male-female relationships.

THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER (1959)

[Update 02/26/2021: need to redo this review and update all of the screenshots.]

Light comedy about a free-spirited dude back in the late 1800's who runs a successful business with two branches, one in Philadelphia and the other in Harrisburg. That's all fine and dandy except that he also has a secret family in both towns with a total of seventeen kids!!! Somehow he's been able to keep the news of the two different families a secret for all of these years, but now that his oldest daughter (from the Harrisburg family) is getting married and the cat might be out of the bag.

The premise for THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER is pretty outrageous and ripe for all kinds of crazy THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK-style hijinks, but it just never happens. The reason Preston Sturges was so successful with TMOMC is he took an outrageous subject matter and went way over the top with it. Unfortunately, TRMP takes an outrageous subject matter and just kinda sits there like a bump on a log. Yeah, there's a few risque jokes and a some humorous moments, but there's never any real sense of danger or consequences for Pennypacker's actions. He's just kinda like "Whatever! Fuck it!" the entire movie.

THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER is a pleasant movie that goes by fast enough, but I think it played it too safe for it's own good and just kinda whitewashed over a lot of the more unpleasant things that would arise from a situation like this. Worth a watch.

TOGETHER AGAIN (1944)

[Update 08/06/2023: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

The always beautiful Irene Dunne is the widower who is also the mayor of the a small town. With so much responsibility she hasn't had any time for romance. A fact that her former father-in-law is frequent to bring up. One night during a thunderstorm lightening knocks the head off the statue of her late husband. Charles Coburn (the father-in-law) says it's a sign from her late husband to carry on with her life. Dunne laughs it off but when she meets the sculptor who's going to make a new statue she starts to maybe believe the story is true. The sculptor (Charles Boyer) is a very handsome man and instantly in love with Dunne.

Different romantic screwball hijinks take place and even though the beginning was a little slow it really starts to pick up steam in the second half, especially when Dunne's attractive teenage daughter accidentally thinks that the sculptor has proposed to her! That part was really funny.

Not the greatest Dunne movie, but I enjoyed it and would watch it again.