Highly Overrated But Still Good

Captivating movie !

Best movie ever!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Anne (Irene Dunne) lives with her father Jonathan (Charles Coburn) and her step-daughter Diana (Mona Freeman). She commissions a sculptor George (Charles Boyer) to work on a statue of her late husband. He moves into her garage to complete the work and romance is in the air. But for who.....? The film is a comedy/romance that is never funny. Charles Coburn provides most of the funny moments but there are far more irritating sequences, namely, whenever Mona Freeman or her boyfriend Gilbert (Jerome Courtland) are on screen. She needs a clout round the head and he plays a simpleton who annoyingly repeats "Goodnight" as his cool talk. This couple are a complete mis-match - she is intelligent and lively while he is slow and moronic - however, they are both very irritating so there is a common trait there. Irene Dunne pulls a few funny expressions but it's not enough to make this film good. It's just boring.........and Charles Boyer looks like a pudding.

I was a bigger fan of "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" before I saw this little gem. "Bachelor's" Oscar should've been for Best Adapted Screenplay, not Best Original. Shows what a short memory Hollywood had even back then, since only 4 years separated the two. Item: Irene Dunne plays a single small town mayor (very well) while Myrna Loy in "Bachelor" plays a single judge. Item: Charles Boyer plays an astonishingly well dressed artist (sculptor) while Cary Grant also plays an astonishingly well dressed artist (painter). Item: both involve faux romances between the artist and a precocious willful girl much too young for him--Dunne's daughter in "Together", Loy's sister in "Bachelor." Both have meddlesome older relatives who push the reluctant lovers together--Chas. Coburn here, Ray Collins there. Dunne and Boyer don't have the chemistry here that they had in "Love Affair" (a huge hit 5 years before and the very circumstantial reason for the title, which has no relation ay-tall with the story) but they get along believably. Dunne gets put through some fairly humorous paces that play off well against her upright public image. It's almost as much a Hollywood satire on small town life (like its DVD-mate "Theodora Goes Wild" also with Dunne) as a romance, with less snickering at the narrow-minded rural bumpkins than most (including "Theodora").

Even one of the most gifted and effervescent comediennes of Hollywood's golden era can't rescue the weak, silly (and sexist) script. Yet again Hollywood of the 1940s insists that a successful woman isn't complete, and can't be happy, unless she has a man - and invariably the plot is going to demand that she give up her career, because a relationship with a man is the only thing that matters. It's a premise that becomes increasingly hard to swallow as we get further and further away from the 1940s and 1950s. Charles Boyer plays the bohemian sculptor (who dresses like Saville Row) who she enlists to duplicate a statue of her husband, with graces the small town where she is Mayor, having succeeded her husband, who died. Charles Coburn is reliable comedic support, as her father-in-law, who relentlessly insists that her first womanly duty is to loosen up - in later years they'd say that she should get laid - and go for the man. There's a subplot about her precocious teen daughter, who falls for Boyer, and the daughter's lanky boyfriend, who then falls for Dunne. It's a duplicate set-up of an I Love Lucy episode a few years later. The film is forced, far-fetched, silly, basically unfunny. The stars struggle to bring a levity and wit that are simply missing from the dialogue, situations or premise. Dunne is so fetching, physically lovely, at the height of her beauty, and could deliver a line, arch an eyebrow, tilt her head, laugh, and make every man just fall in love with her, me included. She transcends an inferior script, not exactly enough to make the movie enjoyable, since it's mindlessly silly and predictable, and beneath the talents of the principal cast, but she is simply captivating. Charles Vidor also manages to inject some sparkle with his deft touch, to a sparkle-less script.

Fun teaming of Dunne and Boyer in a nice little comedy with good performances by all.Dunne plays a widow who is mayor of a small Vermont town. She goes off to New York City to interview a sculptor (Boyer) for a town project but gets involved in a nightclub raid after she is mistaken for the stripper. Back in Vermont Dunne tries to forget Boyer but he shows up and moves into her garage to sculpt.Dunne is goaded into "life" again by her father-in-law (Charles Coburn) and dramatic teen step-daughter (Mona Freeman). This get funny when Freeman thinks Boyer has proposed to her. To get even Dunne traps gawky teen (Jerome Courtland) into proposing to her. The four spar back and forth with Coburn get more and more confused until things finally straighten out.Good support from Elizabeth Patterson, Charles Dingle, Janis Carter, Adele Jergens, Carl Switzer, Nora Cecil, Nina Mae McKinney, and Hobart Cavanaugh. Shelley Winters has a bit part.Dunne and Boyer had great chemistry and three made films together.