How sad is this?

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Put this on looking for a cute, fun 40's flick, and eh? It's got some cute touches here and there, but the movie itself is weirdly scattershot, bringing up plot devices and abandoning them almost immediately for no apparent reason. At one point the witch dad uses his magic to frame the main guy for murder, which his friend immediately witnesses, then within 5 minutes the entire thing is fully resolved with no impact on the movie whatsoever.Stuff will just happen. The witch will cast a spell and it'll backfire, but then she'll be perfectly fine a scene later. The witch dad will get drunk from staying inside of a bottle, and then be like permanently drunk for two straight days until he's not. Good guys turn into bad guys then are immediately turned back to good guys.I think the other thing that bugged me was how much of this movie is devoted to the main guy resisting the premise of the movie, refusing the believe witches are a thing over and over while the witch throws herself at him to be rebutted again and again, in mirror scenes stacked next to each other. Ugh. Just get on with it!Yeah, not one of my favorites.

In my days I've certainly seen my fair share of utterly rank-awful "Screwball" comedies from the 30s & 40s. But, when it comes right down to the level of sheer crap, I honestly don't think I've ever seen one that manages to scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel as "I Married A Witch" inevitably did.Not only was this picture's special effects atrociously bad (even for old-school), but I'm also completely convinced that its story had been literally slapped carelessly together on the spur of the moment. And, even though this seemed to be the case, I'm pretty certain that movie-audiences back in 1942 loved this crummy, brain-dead comedy to pieces and excitedly looked forward to more of the same from Hollywood.When it came to absolutely annoying, grate-on-your-nerves characters, I'd say that the petite, peek-a-boo girl, Veronica Lake, as Jennifer, the witchy witch, had me repeatedly cringing with contempt for her every time she appeared on screen (no matter how attractive the make-up artists tried to make her look).Incompetently directed by Rene Clair (who was obviously just a bungling boob who knew nothing about directing coherent comedy), I have now completely sworn off ever watching another stupid and sickening Screwball comedy, ever-ever again.

This is Veronica Lake's best movie. She is the reason to watch this movie. It is a slower paced movie than today's comedies with a more subtle humor, sometime even a dry humor. I thought it was great. She is great. Veronica makes the movie , she is a great comedian, cuter than a button, and this is the best character she plays in her career. Talk about a great cast, Susan Hayward is hilarious as the bitchy fiancée. She is stunningly radiant in her opening scene in that white dress and both are a feast for the eyes.The scenes of the re-staging of the wedding gets funnier and funnier, the angrier that she and her dad become. Veronica has a "beauty shot" ( a shot set up perfectly, almost as a still portrait and many times an establishing shot of that actor in the film, like Rita Hayworth flinging her hair back in Gilda or John Wayne, when the camera pulls up to a close-up in Stagecoach), that is one of the best ever. Later she is in a dress that you can see through, may be worth it just for that, and she is tiny and adorable throughout. Robert Benchley is a great comedian to play off of Frederick March, and Frederick is downright dashing and perfect for the part. The maid and Veronica's father are so important, as great character actors are, and shine in the few scenes they do.This is one of the unknown great movies. Why it isn't as popular as, It happened One Night any Katherine Hepburn movie, or The Odd Couple type of movies is a mystery. Perhaps you may notice, that is the movies I will review to start, the great unknowns. Everyone knows about Gone with the Wind, Ben Hur, Casablanca etc... I hope my reviews can interest you enough to go see these lesser known films. This is one of them. Veronica's best and one of the best comedies of all time.

Delightfully off-the-wall comedy that whips up a bit of supernatural contrivance to skate fairly near the Hayes Code boundaries of the day. No wonder portraits of strait-laced puritans keep falling (literally) off the wall. Frederick March is a rising politician with no noticeable moral qualities on the verge of his wedding (to classy Susan Hayward) and an election, who is caught up in a series of increasingly compromising situations with a witch come back to take revenge on his ancestor, in the form of Veronica Lake. She subverts the melodrama of him rescuing her from a burning hotel with seductive come-ons. We know it's a set-up, in the papers it looks like a publicity stunt, and he himself suspects it's a frame-up by his political rivals. But the joke is he resists rather feebly. People don't just fall in love, he tells her. "Hmmm, guess this'll take longer than I planned" she muses. She spins the clock round several hours having got herself into his bed and his pyjamas, and dawn finds him still reasoning with her at the bedside. The Hayes Code kept him off the bed of course. But his heroic rescue has made the front pages, and when his PA says "What a break - you don't know what this young woman can do for you." he replies "Oh I've got a pretty good idea" with a glance up at the bedroom. Today's films can't do this stuff, we've lost the moralistic conventions to subvert, and the art of the knowing wink to the audience. But the plot skates along to the stuffy wedding, where we know something's gotta give, complicated by the fact that her love-potion has backfired and she's drunk it herself. Her roguish wizard father (Cecil Kellaway) materialises to keep the bedevilment going (as carried over into the 1960s TV spin off "Bewitched") and open scandal requires a bit of magic to conjure a light and fluffy ending out of the hat. It's the moral ambiguity of March's character in the subtext and the delightful send-up of the femme-fatale that give a sardonic noir edge to this felicitous comedy.