Don’t like It’s A Wonderful Life

[Cattery]

Watched it for the first time many years ago and a few Christmases since. I’ll concede the sentiment is lovely but OMG, the acting and the script are jarring

Ok.

I love it. It's a classic. Also, the acting is of it's time. If you do enjoy it, don't keep rewatching it!

I've only managed to watch it through once cos I find it dull.

The parodies or homages are invariably superior.

I wondered if anyone else felt the same. Yes it’s dull.

You’re insane. It’s a beautiful, life-affirming Christmas classic 🎄

Each to his / her own 🤷🏼‍♀️

I don’t enjoy the theological nonsense about an angel earning his wings so that’s what grates on me about it.

It is a product of its time.

But it’s badly acted. It takes too long to get to the point

Well @Cattery you're ahead of me, I haven't even seen it and I'm pushing 40 so no excuse really 🤭

It's one of my DHs favourite films.
I feel so sorry for Will. Sacrificing so much for the town and they turn his back on him.
And he returns from the alternative reality and will probably do it all again.
James Stewart is a pleasure to watch but it wasn't a hit on release.
Only when it was shown years after because there were no longer royalties to be paid I think.

But Miracle on 34th Street? When Kris uses sign language with the little girl?
And everyone is showing ' I believe ' or 'We believe' pins and posters?
Tears every time. Every year.

Give it a go and see what you think. As I said upthread, the sentiment is lovely but the acting is dire, especially the wife

YANBU. Too sentimental for me! Also, I'm no doubt a philistine, but I just don't enjoy really old films. I know the acting style is of its time, but I find it grating and unnatural.

I suspect I’d find it more jarring than I do if James Stewart’s character was a woman, doing all that self-sacrificing. But then, temperamentally, I’d have skipped off out of town like Gloria Bick without a backward glance.

It's a very radical film for the US. I believe there were suggestions that it was verging on Communist propaganda. If it had been made during the McCarthy era a decade or so later when anything that smacked of Communism led to people being blacklisted, I'm not sure it would ever have been released. The Bailey family run a savings and loan company which helps the little people of Bedford Falls to save for retirement and to buy their own homes. It generally makes the community a better place. Nobody gets rich from it and the richest man in town, Mr Potter, who runs the bank, hates it because it's competition for him and he can't charge the extortionate interest rates that would make him even richer. So he tries to destroy the savings and loan business by underhand means. It's an explicit criticism of the everyone for himself mentality underlying US capitalism. It's suggesting that a much better system is for everyone to chip in a little bit and help each other in turn. Not Communism, but certainly left of centre in US terms.

It's a fairy story.

Agreed, it's not religious, it's a fable.

I’ve never seen it.
It doesn’t really appeal.

It is long.

And I do wish Mr.Potter had got his comeuppance.

Really!??
I thought it was a documentary 🙄

The delivery of the ‘every time a bell rings’ line makes me wants to rip off my lugs. IAWL is a good message overall, one worth considering, but I agree, there’s something hard to watch about it. That said a lot of films other people revere make my skin crawl (Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Miracle on Thingy Street). I struggle with schmaltz.

James Stewart was brilliant, and the end still makes me tear up - lovely film.

So it's therefore ridiculous to worry about its "theological nonsense". It's just magic to serve the plot, no different to Frozen or Cinderella or Harry Potter.

I love it. James Stewart was a war hero as well.

I love it and watch it ever year, but I always end up a seething ball of rage that Mr Potter doesn't get his comeuppance, and I'm not sure that is the point 🤔