MALAYA (1949)

Sleep fucking city.  I love Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy, but this movie has nothing going for it.  It took me four sittings just to get through it! 

Newspaper man Stewart is recruited by the US government to sneak into Malaya and smuggle out rubber to help the American war effort.  Stewart takes along buddy Spencer Tracy.  Tracy is a tough as nails dude who goes around non-stop talking shit and never worries about anything (example: he sneaks into a Japanese base at nighttime wearing a solid white suit and white hat).  Boring and predictable stuff happens and all the while I kept wondering to myself how this film even got made with such a high-caliber cast?!

Zero tension, discombobulated story, unneeded love aspect, stiff dialogue, quicksand pacing, unsatisfying beginning, middle and ending.  Outside of a feeling of boredom there is nothing notable about this film.  Skip it with a vengeance.

HARVEY (1950)

Fifty-one years before DONNIE DARKO, but more in spirit with YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, HARVEY is the idealistic story of a wealthy man, Elwood P. Dowd (Jimmy Stewart), who lives in a small town and has a 6' 3.5" tall rabbit for a best friend.  The rabbits name is Harvey and they tell each other everything.  Thing is nobody else can see Harvey.  They're too busy with their lives and relationships and jobs.  They can't be bothered to be born rich and crazy and spend their evenings walking around with a 6' 3.5" tall rabbit.  Elwood's sister, Veta (Josephine Hull), wants Elwood placed in a mental institution for his own good.  Also, so she and her daughter can get along with their lives and not have their social standing destroyed by having a screwball brother on full display.  That's easier said than done because it seems that everywhere Elwood goes people open up and really take a liking to him...it's almost as if he has an guardian angel watching over him.

As long as you accept HARVEY in it's own reality it's a fine film.  Of course, if you had somebody like Elwood P. Dowd living in your house you'd think he was as crazy as a loon.  But as a film, HARVEY is delightful.  The story is charming, Josephine Hull is hilarious, the story is imaginative, the dialogue is so much fun to watch spin round and round, solid direction, good pace, the camerawork is clever (I like how in a lot of shots there's extra space left for Harvey), excellent supporting cast and Jimmy Stewart...wow!  The wonderful Josephine Hull rightfully won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance here, but I'm very tempted to say that Mr. Stewart should have also won for his performance.  I can't think, off the top of my handsome head, of another actor that could have pulled off the role of Elwood P. Dowd as masterfully as he did.  Great stuff.

Recommended for the unjaded.