Sadly Over-hyped

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

In Christmas in Connecticut, a Martha-Stewart-style columnist is actually a fraud, grinding out columns from her city apartment, who is suddenly asked by her boss to throw a Christmas dinner in the farm she doesn't actually own.That's a really clever idea for a movie, and I had a good feeling about it when I was googling for Christmas films I'd never seen, but alas, the experience was underwhelming. While the cast list is impressive, the script is weak and nonsensical and the direction is lackluster. I rarely laughed, I felt the story was full of holes, I thought one character was treated pretty shabbily just because he was boring, and I found the constant duplicity extreme even by the standards of 40s comedies, particularly since no lie ever catches up with anyone.The movie also didn't have a strong Christmasy feel to it.There was one thing though that, in the context of a 1945 movie, is rather wondrous. There are two very very minor roles by black actors, a delivery person and a waiter or busboy. And the actors are allowed to be normal, with none of the "Yas ma'ams" and dopey remarks typical of the period. In fact, the waitstaff guy gives a dictionary definition of a long word, which makes him one of the smarter people in the movie. The number of Hollywood movies that portray African-Americans as normal human beings is so vanishingly small that I'm always excited to discover one. Outside of that, though, I didn't enjoy this movie.My girlfriend, on the other hand, kinda liked it.

Christmas in Connecticut has been my number one favorite Christmas movie ever since I first saw it as a kid. It's that picture perfect Christmas post card from wartime Hollywood that plays into everyone's fantasy about leaving the city for life on a Connecticut farm. Barbara Stanwyck stars as an independent 1940s woman who writes a cooking column for Smart Housekeeping Magazine. Her stodgy and demanding boss invites himself to her Connecticut farm when she agrees to play host to a sailor who just came home from the war. See the movie to find out what havoc ensues.There's a good cast all around, especially Dennis Morgan as the sailor and Sidney Greenstreet as the stuffy magazine executive who just sees Christmas as a business opportunity until all the screwball comedy loose ends get tied together on Christmas Day. S.Z. Sakall and Una O'Connor have big comic supporting roles as well. This movie is a gem from that bygone era of Hollywood before they became what they are today. After you see it once, you'll want to revisit it every year.

Do you love films about "Christmas"? If you do then you must see this film. Because its is an old film there is something about this film that makes it timeless and most of all enjoyable. Christmas in Connecticut is a story about Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) is a single food writer living in New York whose articles about her fictitious Connecticut farm, husband and baby are admired by housewives across the country. Her publisher, Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet), is unaware of the charade and insists that Elizabeth host a Christmas dinner for returning war hero Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), who read all of her recipes while in the hospital, and is so fond of her that his nurse wrote a letter to the publisher. Facing a career-ending scandal, not only for herself, but also for her editor, Dudley Beecham (Robert Shayne), Lane is forced to comply. In desperation, Elizabeth agrees to marry her friend John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner), who has a farm in Connecticut, even though she does not love him. She also enlists the help of another friend, chef Felix Bassenak (S.Z. Sakall), who has been providing her with the recipes for her articles.Heads up. There is something said in this film that I had to look up. At the beginning you hear "The Old Magoo". It helps to know that "Magoo" is "Someone is too good to be true". One of my favorite films to see. If you have to buy it DO IT!

The first half of the 1940's was marked by well known performers from other film genres stepping out of character to star in what may be the last wave of remembered Hollywood screwball comedies still marketed for home viewing and seasonally aired on television. Barbara Stanwyck does her usual professional job as the hard as nails career woman fudging a domestic column for a magazine whose bluff is called in thirties type screwball involving a runaway horse and cow, mixed up babies, Cuddles Szakall stealing the show at every turn with his comic flair and a rural farmhouse which lacks the central iconic focus of every movie advertising the charm of a rural farmhouse - the welcoming, party sized period kitchen. The storyboard is a nonsensical enough fantasy to work yet the editing takes most of the true comic flair out of the film. It seems to me most of the way through a decent musical with at least Dennis Morgan singing once but not truly a top flight comedy.