Product: Holiday (1938)
Rating: 5.0
"Someone stop me; O someone please, just try and stop me!"
The delectable combination of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn is fully taken advantage of in George Cukor's 1938 "Holiday", the third straight film starring the unbeatable Grant-Hepburn pairing. Overall, they made four films together; 1937's "The Awful Truth", 1938's "Bringing Up Baby", "Holiday", and 1940's "The Philadelphia Story". Out of all of these wondrous films, "Holiday" is, for reasons I simply cannot grasp, the least popular. This jovial, upbeat, romantic comedy puts Grant in the pitch-perfect role of Johnny Case, a free-spirited man who has become engaged to uptight, money-obsessed Julia Seton (Doris Nolan). Upon meeting her family for the first time, he discovers that her family is filthy-rich... and that Julia has a vivacious, rebellious (and attractive) sister, Linda (Hepburn).This irresistibly playful look at wealth, society, and marriage was adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman from the 1928 Broadway play by Philip Barry. Hepburn understudied the part on Broadway before her screen tests, therefore perfectly nailing her role. Not to mention that her character of Linda is very much like Hepburn herself; bold, strong-willed, witty, and independent.Wit, insight, deft characterization, family conflicts, and social commentary all come together to form an ingenious script full of some truly memorable lines. In addition, all of the characters are perfectly cast, interestingly written and suitably diverse, providing maximum entertainment.Analogous to so many of Hepburn's movies, "Holiday" is about the kind of love you don't often see in movies; an atypical romance. This is a pure, sweet, and intelligent sort of love, one which we see develop and with which, by the end of the movie, we wholeheartedly agree.