You Can't Run Away from It (1956)

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The 1950s was certainly the decade for re-makes. Some like "Magnificent Obsession", "Imitation of Life" and "An Affair To Remember" were huge hits. Others were refurbished as musicals with only modest-at-most commercial success. Along with this one, I remember "My Sister Eileen", "Silk Stockings" and "L'il Abner".Actually, although classed as a "musical re-make", the songs here are neither memorable nor many. Stubby Kaye figures in the first on the bus, after which he disappears completely from the action. The only other number worth mentioning is a fairly amusing little routine between Allyson and an immobile scarecrow, which would have been ten times funnier had the scarecrow come to life. This omission is symptomatic of the film as a whole. No imagination, no liveliness, no vitality, no pizazz. Even such memorable bits of business from the original as the attempt to thumb a ride are watered down here way past the level of blandness. Were it not for the engaging personalities of its two stars, the movie would be a total write-off. Only the domestic altercation in the motel (ending with the delightfully harassed Walter Baldwin's exit line, "I told you they were married!") comes within shouting distance of matching the zest of the original.

I agree with most other reviewers here that this is a pale remake of a great classic film, though I found it mildly pleasant anyway.Some of the other reviewers said why even try to remake a classic; why bother. What they don't understand is the big difference between our film culture and the pre-home video, pre-TCM, pre-repertory cinema era. Successful films were remade, because producers thought they were a good bet to make a profit. The studios usually already owned the story and had an effective script to base an update on; no need to pay for the rights to a play or novel, and they could probably pay less for an an updated script than for a new one. If the story was well received and made money years before, it had a better chance of being successful than untested material. The great majority of the potential audience for a remake had either never seen the older version, or had seen it many years before, usually just once, so the older version was just a faint memory. And much of the audience would be interested in seeing the story told with current stars, in color, and when it came in, in wide screen.On another note, as of June 2015, TCM is still showing a poor quality print of the movie, the Cimemascope image cropped to something like 1:66 to 1 (it was not pan and scanned), color washed out (not remotely like what Technicolor print would have looked like when the film was new), mono soundtrack (the original was stereo according to IMDb). I imagine this is because it is not economically viable for Sony (owners of the Columbia film achieve) to do a new transfer.

Definitely from another era. When Jack Lemmon and June Allyson find circumstances forcing them to share a hotel room, they hang a blanket up between their single beds. I'm not sure why they have to do this - modesty? lack of self-control? I also wondered why Ms. Allyson would marry a man she doesn't love, and why Mr. Lemmon had never thought about loving a woman.Lemmon and Allyson are starred; and they are interesting to watch, especially during the scene when she declares her love to him. Allyson has an energetic "Scarecrow" number. The movie doesn't sparkle like it should, however. The actors do not make the situation believable. There are times when, instead of background music, there are background songs. This is a bad re-make. *** You Can't Run Away from It (10/31/56) Dick Powell ~ Jack Lemmon, June Allyson, Charles Bickford

Jack Lemmon, a new leading man in Hollywood in the 1950s and a younger June Allyson, straight from the M.G.M. Galaxy of musical stars made this a tuneful technicolour re-make of "It Happened One Night," for Columbia Pictures, ably assisted by Stubby Kaye, who never fails with a song; and all this under the direction of Dick Powell, who was married to June Allyson. There have been many post-war musicals released on Video and DVD and Columbia would do well to add this one to their DVD collection. It would be a fitting tribute to the multi-talented Jack Lemmon and Dick Powell who, himself, who was a song and dance man of the 1930s.