The Shop Around the Corner

Falling in love in Hungary. Nearly as romantic as Paris, we think. This 1940 Jimmy Stewart flick shows us how to love and live in that delightful Eastern European clime (something not possible after WWII). The forerunner to the cutesy You've Got Mail, which had your favorite cutesy actors, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, The Shop Around the Corner has far less charm and consistency than its recent remake.

Two things we're thankful for are the Stanislavsky acting method and the advent of music scoring for every movie. Both are badly needed here. We wondered at the beginning of the movie how our heroine (played by Margaret Sullivan) was reading her character. We later discovered that she had no plan. Her character wavers between deliberate deception and cutesy perk so much that by movie's end we were rooting for Jimmy Stewart to NOT go after her. Meanwhile, Stewart looks like he's mailing this one in for the paycheck.

The subplot involves the Wizard of Oz, as the owner of the store where Stewart and Sullivan work, feeling suicidal thanks to his cheating wife. His return from despair was the best part of the movie. Really, we never thought we would care so much about Hungarian entrepreneurs. If you're looking for a tale about the interrelationship of marriage and business, here you go.

Entertainment: 3
Intelligence: 6
Morality: 7