My Favorite Wife (1940)

good back-story, and good acting

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

I thought the funniest scenes involved the judge, the front desk manager, the insurance agent and the Randolph Scott character.As someone else said Gail Patrick was more or less a prop - no personality good or bad. Irene Dunn couldn't make up her mind whether her character was in a comedy or a drama. Cary Grant thought he was in a home movie and enjoyed making faces at the camera.The main character just didn't behave as if they were in the situation they were supposed to be in -- wife lost at sea for years, husband not knowing what to do - really? Also, lets not tell the kids but just kinda bring them in as a joke.Little snappy dialogue and something off with the timing and delivery.Watching it I thought this was not the Cary Grant from His Girl Friday and Arsenic and Old Lace.

Though not as spontaneously hilarious as Dunne and Grant's earlier pairing in "The Awful Truth" (1937), "My Favorite Wife" again displays the masterful comedic timing and wonderful on screen romantic chemistry that Irene and Cary shared. Just as she did in "The Awful Truth", Miss Dunne has to use every trick at her disposal in order to goad Cary Grant into doing the right thing. She not only has to compete against her replacement spouse counterpart and ice queen Bianca, she has to win her husband and the father of her children back...all the way back to the marriage bed. The end scene with Cary Grant dressed as Santa Claus and wishing Irene Dunne a Merry Christmas is hysterical. Because of the strict movie code of the time, he can't come right out and say what special gift he is delivering to her but the audience knows just the same! Movies were so much more entertaining back then because they left so much to the imagination, thereby enriching moviegoers' imaginations in the process.

Last year, after James Garner died, I watched quite of few of his movies like Move Over, Darling which he did with Doris Day. I enjoyed that one. Now I just watched the movie that one was based on, this one starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. Much of the same plot but this one was much funnier especially when Ms. Dunne did a Southern accent! Grant was also funny with his reactions and his lying to try to not make anyone mad at him. Gail Patrick wasn't so funny as the new wife but I guess she wasn't supposed to be but Randolph Scott was quite enjoyably hilarious as the "Adam" to Irene's "Eve"! So on that note, My Favorite Wife is highly recommended. P.S. The main reason I watched this just now was because since I've been reviewing the Our Gang comedies-and individual members doing films outside the series-in chronological order, this was next on the list since one of the players was former member Scotty Beckett who's one of two children of Grant and Dunne.

Handsome widower Cary Grant (as Nick Arden) has his spouse, shipwrecked off the coast of Indochina seven years ago, declared legally dead so he can marry an attractive brunette he met while helping with the search. The newlyweds are honeymooning when Mr. Grant's wife, still beautiful Irene Dunne (as Ellen Wagstaff), returns home. It turns out Ms. Dunne had survived on a deserted island. She expects to pick up where she left off with Grant and their two cute kids. Grant's new wife, pretty Gail Patrick (as Bianca Bates) is anxious to put their marriage to bed. Things get more complicated when hunky Randolph Scott (as Stephen Burkett) arrives on the scene. He was stranded with Dunne for seven years on the island...The castaways called themselves "Adam and Eve"...This was one of two attempts to turn the melodramatic Alfred Lord Tennyson poem "Enoch Arden" into a 1940 comedy movie. More successful than "Too Many Husbands" (1940), "My Favorite Wife" reverses the gender of the original characters and leaves viewers with the possibility that no extra-marital sex occurred. The formula was repeated for Doris Day in "Move Over, Darling" (1963). Which wife fits the "My Favorite Wife" title is never in doubt. Note, for example how the women are introduced – Dunne is sweet and motherly while Ms. Patrick is primping and self-absorbed. Safe and obvious, the story engages with performances and innuendo. Leo McCarey and the RKO studio crew make it a smooth, classy production.******* My Favorite Wife (5/2/40) Garson Kanin ~ Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Gail Patrick, Randolph Scott