Watch Christmas in Connecticut For Free

the audience applauded

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Barbara Stanwyck (Mrs Lane) is a popular journalist on Sydney Greenstreet's (Yardley) magazine who specializes in homely life articles from her farm in Connecticut with her husband and baby. She also tops the charts when it comes to her recipes. War hero Dennis Morgan (Jeff) wins an opportunity to spend Christmas at her farm courtesy of Greenstreet who also invites himself along. How nice. Except Stanwyck is a fraud. She can't cook, she doesn't live on a farm, she doesn't live in Connecticut, she hasn't got a baby and she hasn't got a husband. And she doesn't want to get busted so she needs help to keep up the pretence… This has a good premise for comedic situations and Stanwyck is funny in her role, especially when it comes to her baby etiquette. However, there are too many misunderstandings that need resolving and so we regretfully fall into a madcap zany, screwball comedy that gets tedious. By the end of the film you have been willing things to resolve themselves for at least 20 minutes and it has also become complicated. They didn't need so many things going wrong and opportunities for better comedic situations weren't explored as much as they could have been, for example, the arrival of a different baby. That could have been very funny. But, the film became poorly written. Characters also started to grate, especially Uncle SZ Sakall (Felix). He has that cuddly image but he is just annoying.There are funny moments, more so at the beginning as you set out with the film, but I'm afraid the film gets boring. I read one reviewer who said that this film reminded him of "Holiday Inn" (1942) only this was funnier. What!!?? He is obviously completely bonkers. Watch "Holiday Inn" every time over "Christmas In Connecticut".

Like "It Happened on 5th Avenue", I never saw this movie until TCM showed it at Christmas time! Nobody else shows black & white movies! Like 5th Ave, it revolves around an ex-serviceman and love at first sight. A "Betty Crocker-Martha Stewart" type magazine columnist writes about her lovely country home and down-home recipes. She is a complete fraud as she lives in a NYC apartment and gets all her cooking tips from her Hungarian restaurant owner "Felix", very well played by character actor S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakal. So, Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) gets caught in a lie and has to fabricate the whole thing, right down to the country ranch, husband and baby. All fake. She's single, childless, and lives in the city. Along comes a Navy hero who gets invited to her "home for the holidays". She can't even boil water, so "Felix" tries to teach her to cook, complete with flapjacks stuck on the ceiling! As mentioned, she falls in love with the Navy guy and the movie becomes even better. The sub-plots include her overpowering magazine boss (Sidney Greenstreet), a friend who she almost mistakenly marries, and a borrowed baby who changes sexes and hair colors! It's a "screwball" comedy. Great fun for all and highly recommended! The film runs a bit rough on both TCM and the DVD. Horizontal "wobble" and minor film damage for the first 20 minutes. It must have been hard to restore! There is also a 1992 TV remake with Dyan Cannon out there, but the original is far better.

Christmas in ConnecticutWhen cooking tofurky for Christmas remember to baste it in Nyquil to get that tryptophan feeling.Or, you can do like the journalist in this comedy and tell your cook to do it.Writing bogus copy about her husband, child and Connecticut farmhouse, food columnist Elizabeth (Barbara Stanwyck) must now materialize these lies to host a war-hero (Dennis Morgan) for Christmas dinner - at the behest of her oblivious publisher (Sydney Greenstreet).Marrying a friend (Reginald Gardiner) who owns a country house, hiring a chef (S.Z. Sakall) and borrowing a baby, she plays house with great incompetence. Struggling to maintain her façade, her infatuation with the soldier and the dinner menu, her house of cards starts to crumble.A sophisticated screwball comedy in a picturesque snowy countryside setting, Christmas in Connecticut is a neglected holiday gem.Incidentally, the biggest tell she isn't a real food writer is her sinuous frame.Green Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

The first half of the 1940's was marked by well known performers from other film genres stepping out of character to star in what may be the last wave of remembered Hollywood screwball comedies still marketed for home viewing and seasonally aired on television. Barbara Stanwyck does her usual professional job as the hard as nails career woman fudging a domestic column for a magazine whose bluff is called in thirties type screwball involving a runaway horse and cow, mixed up babies, Cuddles Szakall stealing the show at every turn with his comic flair and a rural farmhouse which lacks the central iconic focus of every movie advertising the charm of a rural farmhouse - the welcoming, party sized period kitchen. The storyboard is a nonsensical enough fantasy to work yet the editing takes most of the true comic flair out of the film. It seems to me most of the way through a decent musical with at least Dennis Morgan singing once but not truly a top flight comedy.