Adam's Rib 1949
I watched Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby recently and was disappointed, but liked her better in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, so I picked an earlier pairing with Spencer Tracy, Adam’s Rib this time. This is a better movie and I enjoyed watching Hepburn and Tracy together as a loving couple whose professional lives put them at odds. I liked that despite their differences in court (they are both lawyers and end up representing opposing parties), they could put that aside when they went home, with a little more affection than movies usually showed at the time. But the writing lets them down, making the trial literally a circus act, and then they actually get mad at each other. The trial itself seems pretty silly, when something more realistic and intelligent was called for. The idea for the movie was inspired by two married lawyers representing opposing parties in a divorce case, who then divorced themselves to marry those two clients. That seems like a more interesting storyline than this silly plot about a woman shooting her inattentive, cheating, and abusive husband in cold blood. The movie careens into more broad humor as a female circus strongman lifts Spencer Tracy in court (and even watching the SD version I had you can easily see the wires supporting him, which is just bad directing). I liked the first 30 or 40 minutes more than the rest of the movie, but Hepburn, despite her character’s courtroom antics, is easier to like than the lunatic in Bringing Up Baby and Tracy is pretty solid as well, both playing characters with real weaknesses and feelings. It is a decent movie, but a little too lightweight to get more than a B.
Written: 03 Dec 2021