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I'll tell you why so serious

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Dick Powell plays an office clerk named Jimmy MacDonald who loves entering all kinds of contests in hopes of winning the grand prize, including one from Maxwell House Ground Coffee. His co-workers decide to play a practical joke on him by faking a winning telegram saying that Jimmy has won the $25,000 grand prize. Ecstatic, Jimmy then goes overboard buying presents and proposing to his girlfriend, as well as receiving a promotion. When he learns the whole thing was a hoax, he finds himself in a real bind... Sporadically funny comedy is just too contrived and silly to succeed, despite an energetic cast. What a rotten trick to pull on someone too!

This early Preston Sturges satire suffers by comparison to his later films, but even if it never reaches the dizzy heights expected of a Sturges comedy it still presents an enjoyable (if at times too predictable) farce. The earthbound scenario offers none of the director's usual madcap flights of fancy, following an unlucky entrant in a marketing slogan contest (Dick Powell) who mistakenly believes himself the winner of a $25,000 grand prize. It's all the result of an innocent practical joke, but the gag backfires when everyone else, including the contest sponsor, believes it too. The unsuspecting Powell suddenly finds the world off his back and at his feet, and the consumer frenzy that follows shows glimpses of the classic Sturges brand of anarchy, sadly lacking from the rest of the film. Lots of running around and shouting at double-quick speed can't really camouflage the lack of belly laughs, but the cast works up plenty of enthusiasm, and the final image (look quick) is wonderful.

This is probably my favorite Presto Sturgess film--and I am not sure wonder why it's one of his least famous films. This is because although the story is quite simple, it's presented absolutely perfectly. The dialog, the characters and everything about the production is top-notch. In fact, it's so good I give it a 10--something I actually do pretty rarely. But it has got to be one of the best comedies of its time--in the same league as great comedies such as "Bringing Up Baby", "His Girl Friday" and "Arsenic and Old Lace" (all, incidentally, which starred Cary Grant).The film stars Dick Powell and Ellen Drew. I have always liked Powell in films where he didn't sing--he had a nice presence about him and was underrated as an actor. As for Powell, he, too, hated the singing in all his earlier films and I am sure he liked having a break in the usual routine. However, if you've seen many of writer/director Sturgess' films, you'll know that the real stars of his movies are the wonderful supporting characters. Raymond Walburn is simply terrific but Franklin Pangborn, William Demerest (who seems to be in almost EVERY Sturgess film) and Ernest Truex are just wonderful and add so much color to the movie.Powell plays a guy who is always entering jingle contests (something rather popular back in the good 'ol days) but keeps failing. He is especially excited about a coffee company that is giving away a $25,000 first prize--and that's all he thinks about or talks of to his fiancé or at work. To play a joke on him (a very, very unfunny one), one of his co-workers decide to send him a phony telegram saying he's won this contest. As soon as this occurs, an unexpected chain of events takes place and the joke goes spiraling out of control. I'd say more, but I don't want to ruin the film. Just see the movie--it will give you quite a few laugh out loud moments and is clever and supremely well-constructed. A must-see.

Short and sweet, bright and breezy, but not without pith, this early Preston Sturges feature helped further establish his "wonder-kid" reputation in the early 40's before his great classics "Sullivan's Travels", "The Lady Eve" and my favourite "Hail The Conquering Hero".The simple premise of a hoax win in a national coffee-slogan competition for ordinary average nice-guy Powell is the springboard for a light morality tale along the lines of "he who does good has good things happen to them" - although not without the usual series of ups and downs, just as you'd expect.Of course nobody here is really bad, even the duped killjoy Mr, no make that Dr Maxford of the sponsoring coffee company or Mr Shindler of the too-trusting department store from whom Powell buys gifts for the whole neighbourhood on the strength of the phony winning telegram placed on his desk by his prankster work colleagues. Even when he finds out that his win is bogus, Powell can't get angry at the tricksters, so it's no real surprise that his homeliness, honesty and humility wins everyone over, including his feisty girl-friend, played by Ellen Drew, with the predictable twist in the last reel that Powell's slogan wins anyway.Powell is very likable in the lead, although Drew is a little too high-pitched in delivery for my taste as the film develops. There's the usual troop of madcap eccentrics which peoples almost every Sturges comedy, with some nice little cameos, I particularly liked the actor playing the deadpan cop, not above making some contemporary allusions to Hitler & Mussolini to stress a point.The dialogue of course is mile-a-minute vernacular and I got a kick out of Sturges' Dickensian word-play over triple-barrelled lawyer's names (along the lines of "Swindle Cookum and Robbem!"). Right from the start, we get the "screwball comedy" template of a poor Joe and his girl, dreaming of something bigger waiting for something extraordinary to happen, with Powell and Drew's extended night-time scene on their New York apartment roof-top, and succeeding entertaining scenes including Powell's reaction to "winning" the competition and best of all the frenetic crowd scene when Maxford tries to get his money back only to cop a batch of rotten fruit ("Don't throw the good stuff" admonishes one parent to a tomato-wielding youngster), it's all good clean fun and ends up happily ever after. And get a load of that "zoom" shot back into Maxford's office at the end - it certainly got me out of my chair, not the last time Sturges employed camera tricks of this type - remember the memorable stop-start sequence to "The Palm Beach Story". The movie celebrates community, the little guy who dreams of making it big and how to meet disaster with alacrity, in short a feel-good movie with a big heart, well worth an hour and four minutes of anyone's time.