Didn't do well in the box office ???

Rating: 10/10 (27 February 2000)

This movie supposedly did poorly when it was first released in the box office. I was never a fan of films from pre-1960's, and had always thought they were inappropriately dramatic, poorly acted, and boring. It's a Wonderful Life may be one of the few exceptions to this. I thought the movie was phenomenal. The acting, script, and plot was incredible. Some of the lines were so simple and yet the acting made it all come alive. At the end of the movie, there is a featurette called "The Making of It's a Wonderful Life." It was revealed that the actor/actress forgot several pages worth of script lines in several scenes, but the acting was so great that the director decided to trash that segment of the script. This might might have been the ingredient that saved this movie from the boredom that plagues most films from this era. Without going into the spoilers, I will just say that this is definitely one of the top 5 feel-good dramas of the century, and the IMDB votes certainly reflect this. So why didn't this film do well in the box office? The featurette covers this in detail, but watch the movie and decide for yourself.