You Can't Take It With You DVD (1938)

You Can't Take It With You

1938

Overall rating: 3.5 out of 5

from 1475 members

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's whimsical Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play You Can't Take It With You was transformed into a paean to populism by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin. This is the story of the zany Sycamore household, presided over by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), a former businessman who has turned his back on commerce to enjoy life. At the Sycamores', everyone does just what he or she pleases. Penny Sycamore (Spring Byington), Grandpa's daughter, has become a novelist because someone delivered a typewriter to her home by mistake. Penny's husband makes firecrackers in his basement with the help of Mr. DePinna (Halliwell Hobbes), an iceman who showed up at the Sycamore doorstep one day and never left. Their daughter, Essie (Ann Miller), imagines that she's a prima ballerina, even though her dour teacher, Boris (Mischa Auer), assesses her work with, Confidentially, it steenks! Essie's husband, Ed (Dub Taylor), who'd rather play a xylophone than work, spends his free time selling Essie's candy, wrapping each package in paper from a used printing press that dispenses anarchistic slogans. The one normal member of the household is Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur), in love with wealthy Tony Kirby (James Stewart). Naturally, when the stuffy, aristocratic Kirbys come to the Sycamores' for dinner, the event is a disaster, capped with the arrest of everyone in the household. Hart and Kaufman's third act found the previously judgmental Kirby softening his attitude toward the freewheeling Sycamore clan, admitting that he's never had so much fun in his life. Screenwriter Riskin altered the focus of the play by throwing out the third act and concentrating upon Tony Kirby's father, Kirby Sr., who as played by Edward Arnold is transformed from a stock stuffed shirt into a ruthless, grasping tycoon, eager to buy up every house on the Sycamores' block to make room for a munitions plant. The film thus became the story of Kirby's regeneration at the hands of the carefree Sycamores. Enough of the play's screwball elements are retained to compensate for Riskin's speechifying and plot distortions (though the softening of one of the play's vital ingredients, Grandpa's refusal to pay his income tax, borders on the sacrilegious). You Can't Take It With You earned several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director (Capra's third Oscar).~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

You Can't Take It With You details

Format:	U DVD
Starring:	James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Donald Meek
Director:	Frank Capra
Genre:	Comedy
Studio:	SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Collections:	Best Picture Oscar Winners

DVD 1 disc

Name	Discs
You Can't Take It With You	U Feature

DVD Information

Run time:	2 hours 1 minute
Rental release:	24 Feb 2003
Main languages:	English
Subtitles:	Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

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Most helpful review You Can't Take It With You

How could a director and cast like this ever fail---brilliant

By roncoach (369 reviews) from suffolk , 12 Oct 2010

[Highly rated reviewer]

What a pity we don't seem to have films like this today.

This film brings us the best of everything good that cinema can bring us : great screen legends ( Jean Arthur, Jimmy Stewart, Barrymore), one of the greatest director ( collecting his third Oscar for this picture), a whole crew enjoying making the film as much as all the audiences were sure to, and......everything that the Golden Age Of Hollywood stood for.

I guess that less than 100 films, out of so many tens of thousands, have won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

This was one of them.

Let that be its own review and you can decide if that is a good enough reason to watch or not.

I think it is.............
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How could a director and cast like this ever fail---brilliant

By roncoach (369 reviews) from suffolk , 12 Oct 2010

[Highly rated reviewer]

What a pity we don't seem to have films like this today.

This film brings us the best of everything good that cinema can bring us : great screen legends ( Jean Arthur, Jimmy Stewart, Barrymore), one of the greatest director ( collecting his third Oscar for this picture), a whole crew enjoying making the film as much as all the audiences were sure to, and......everything that the Golden Age Of Hollywood stood for.

I guess that less than 100 films, out of so many tens of thousands, have won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

This was one of them.

Let that be its own review and you can decide if that is a good enough reason to watch or not.

I think it is.............
- Was this review helpful to you?
- (24) Yes |
- No (17)
Report this review
But you can enjoy it!!

By a customer from East Grinstead , 10 Aug 2009

An oldie that let you know why you like oldies. Fun and evocative throughout. Crazy but why not?
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Disappointing for Capra

By a customer from Cambridge , 18 Jun 2009

This film hasn't dated well compared to other Capra. Too whimsical and some of the dialogue is hard to follow.
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You can't take it with you

By safron (8 reviews) from Luton , 03 Mar 2009

This was a well made, enjoyable film
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Capra

By jamieca (2 reviews) from Bristol , 09 Feb 2009

Watchable, if a little saccahrine.
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