Talk of the Town, The

Director:  George Stevens
Year Released:  1942
Rating:  2.0

Cary Grant is framed for a crime he didn't commit (according to the movies, a great deal of crimes are blamed on the wrong people – thanks, Hitch, for the paranoia) and is hidden by sympathizer Jean Arthur in an attic from super lawyer Ronald Colman. Besides being heavy-handed – there's more than one speech about justice, taking matters into one's own hands and all that jazz – it contains a lot of nuisance contrivances that are so frequent they become hard to overlook (especially towards the end), like when a key letter is produced at exactly the right time, or when a long-sought man reveals his identity in a bank (our heroes, naturally, are waiting for him but don't know what he looks like). Letting go of reason and believability a few times is understandable – it's the foundation of literature, movies and so forth – but this doesn't know when to stop. Jean Arthur, whining and fretting, is still no Myrna Loy; Colman's lines are a little too refined.

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