Of all the comedy genres screwball is the one most dependent on rapidity. This is because, unlike its siblings rom com, black com or com of manners, screwball is not trying to comment mordantly, satirically or wittily on reality but is rather trying to transcend it. A somnolent screwball comedy allows the viewer too much time to think of extraneous stuff that will plunge him, her or them back into the mundane rather than keep them in the airy, wacky, nutso atmosphere they wish to inhabit. Stuff like how George Brent should not be allowed within a thousand feet of the madcap, with or without glasses, and how Vera Caspary should stick to what she knows best, which is the antithesis of the wild and the zany, and how, speaking of antitheses, Virginia Mayo, one of the better 1940s screen commediennes, is given nothing even remotely funny to say or do while all the (few) good lines go to Ann Dvorak, who is the polar opposite of Mayo, and how the person who scored this thing should be forced to spend eternity listening to perky sit com music, and what Hitchcock could have done with the two nosey biddies in the apartment across the court, as opposed to what Leigh Jason did not do with them, or what a dull dog the dog in this dull dog of a movie is.
In other words, this is one, slow screwball comedy. Give it a C (as in creep).
In other words, this is one, slow screwball comedy. Give it a C (as in creep).