Plot summary (with spoilers): She is Ellie Andrews, famous Paris Hilton-like socialite, whose father is a bajillonaire. She elopes with a man named Westley against her father's wishes. He and his boy friday kidnap her before she can consummate the marriage (so it doesn't count!) and puts her on a boat headed back to New York. She flips out and stamps her feet and Daddy slaps her face and she jumps off the boat and swims ashore.
He is Peter Warne, he's a newspaper reporter who just got fired by his boss and is busy getting soused at a bar with his now-former co-workers. He has a creepy John Waters mustache and is aggressively unattractive.
They meet cute on a bus in Georgia headed for New York. They sit on a seat squished next to each other and he pegs her as snob and she pegs him as a ruffian. He smokes a big smelly pipe and she pats her hair. Oh, these two hate each other! I bet they'll just sit in silence for the whole ride and then never talk to each other or think about each other ever again.
The bus takes a fifteen minute break, so everyone gets off. Ellie puts her suitcase down and turns away, and a man takes off with it. Peter chases after the man, but is unable to catch him. He tells Ellie that they'll report the theft to the bus driver, and the company will replace the bags. They will?! Wow, the Olden Times were incredibly accommodating! But Ellie doesn't want to file a report and use her real name, so she refuses. She says she only has four dollars left because all her money was in her suitcase.
They get back on the bus, and Ellie falls asleep on Peter's shoulder and is embarrassed when she wakes up the next morning nuzzling his neck. The driver announces a thirty minute breakfast break, and when Ellie says she'll need an hour, the guy just sneers, "Oh, yeah?" and she doesn't pick up on the sarcasm at all and just says, "yeah" and gets off the bus. Peter knows she'll miss the bus, so he gets off, too. An hour later, the bus is gone, and they're both stranded, with another bus not coming for twelve hours. Ellie offers to pay him Tuesday for a hamburger today, and he instead gets super offended and goes into a "rich, spoiled women like you" speech and says she should've just asked for help instead of offering to pay him back (?) and it's all weird and I can't tell if this is just a rich vs poor thing or a men vs. women thing. Anyway, Ellie runs off, and Peter calls his former boss collect and tells him that he's working on a big scoop. He's on a bus with the famous Ellie Andrews, last seen swimming away from her father. DUN!
Ellie returns after twelve hours, and they both get back on the bus, but she won't sit with him, and instead sits next to some other annoying dude who starts immediately chatting her up and when she's cold to him, he says something about how he loves cold mammas, "because when they get hot, oh boy do they sizzle", and then he makes sizzle noises and it's really funny. Like, I laughed out loud and shit. So Peter sees she's in agony, so he goes over to the guy and claims they're married and tells the guy to scram, "before I sock you in the nose". Why don't people use "sock" as a verb anymore?
They're on the bus for awhile, and Ellie tries to buy chocolate from a "boy" selling concessions, and Peter takes her purse and says, "this morning you had four dollars, and now you have 1.65. What happened?" She rightly says that's none of his business and she takes her purse and puts it in his luggage and says, "from now on, you're on a budget" and when she protests, he full-on tells her to "shut up!" and she does, because broads just have to learn their place sometimes.
That night, they stop at a hotel for two dollars a night. Ellie doesn't have enough money and it starts to rain.
So Peter pretends they're married and they get a room together. Ellie says no thank you, she'll sleep on this bus. But she doesn't leave. He tells her that he knows who she is and promises to get her to New York in exchange for an exclusive story. And then this fucking fantastic scene happens: Peter puts up a rope in the middle of the room and drapes a blanket over it. He invites Ellie to go over to her side of the blanket and gives her some of his pajamas to wear. But she doesn't move. So he starts to undress, chattering away about how men undress in different ways. Some guys start with the shirt (he takes off his shirt) and some start with (he grabs his belt) their...shoes (he takes off his shoes) and then finally they just rip it all off. He starts to pull off his pants, and she races over to the other side. Don't worry, darling. This blanket here. This is the wall of Jericho. There's no way it's coming down because you're lucky I forgot my trumpet. Then she undresses and we see from his point of view as she bumps into the blanket, causing it to move about. She flings her clothes over the top of it like it's a clothesline and he gently asks her to remove them from his view. She gets in bed. He no lie fucking howls like a wolf. And then it's quiet. She realizes she doesn't know his name and asks him and he says "I'm the whippoorwill that cries in the night. I'm the soft morning breeze that caresses your face". And it's not corny, I swear. It's hot, is what it is, John Waters mustache and all.
So they go to sleep, after several hours of lying in the dark and staring at the ceiling, I imagine. The next morning, the guy from earlier on the bus sees Ellie's picture in the newspaper and sees a 10,000 dollar reward offered for her return to her father. He plots to turn her in. On the bus, everyone sings and has a great time until the busdriver, also singing, runs off the road and into a ditch. Everybody gets out of the bus, and the guy approaches Peter and tells him he knows who Ellie is and offers to split the reward if they both turn her in. Peter pretends to be a hitman and says they're going to kill the girl and the guy wants no part of that and runs off. But Peter decides it's too dangerous to stay on the bus and he and Ellie go running off. They cross a river and Peter flings Ellie over his shoulder so she won't get wet and she calls this a piggyback ride, and he says she's wrong and she says that's what her dad always called it and he says her dad doesn't know what a piggyback ride is and then he says "Abe Lincoln, now he knew all about piggyback rides" which is either the weirdest non-sequitur ever, or a reference I don't get. They sleep that night in the hay by the moonlight and the next morning they try to hitchhike. No one will stop for Peter, but when Ellie tries, by flashing her gams, a car stops immediately. Peter's pissed and basically calls her a whore and Ellie's contrite. Sigh. You really had me for awhile there, movie. Then the driver stops at a restaurant and gets out and when Peter and Ellie get out too, he jumps back in the car and drives off with Peter's stuff. Peter goes chasing after him and around the corner. Time lapse, Peter comes back with the car, saying since the guy tried to steal his suitcase he feels justified in beating him up and stealing the car. All right then. Ellie is thrilled and they go driving off. That night, Ellie sees a newspaper that says her father has announced that he has officially withdrawn his desire for an annulment, and has welcomed his new son-in-law into the family and just wants his daughter back. She hides the paper from Peter. They get a hotel that night and put up the Wall of Jericho again and then talk to each other from their beds. Ellie asks Peter if he believes in love and he says yes. She suddenly appears on his side of the wall, and tells him she loves him. He reluctantly but firmly tells her to get back on her side of the wall, as she's married. She does, and cries herself to sleep. But the next morning, he changes his mind but decides he needs money to propose to her. He sneaks out of the hotel and goes to his old boss, and offers to sell his story for 1,000 bucks. The boss agrees, but of course then Ellie wakes up and thinks Peter has left her and we do all the third act rom-com beats that apparently haven't changed in 75 years. And it goes on forever. Ellie agrees to remarry her beau in a church ceremony. Peter is petulant and says she's a snob anyway. Then she walks down the aisle...then blah...then blah..then blah...stops the wedding...father pays off the first groom...they get married...and the walls come tumbling down.
Review: There's some great moments of wit in here, and a lot more sophisticated script than I was expecting. The first "Walls of Jericho" scene was some of the best sexual tension I've ever seen in film, right up there with Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight. It was really great, and because of our more liberated times, I don't think will ever be repeated. It's just not plausible nowadays that those two wouldn't have just slept together much, much earlier. The misogynist stuff is pretty hard to take, it's far more blatant here than say, in Bringing Up Baby. I realize it's a losing proposition to judge these movies based on today's values, but it's hard not to. The third act, predicated on Peter not telling Ellie where he was going leading to misunderstandings was a terrible and predictable way to end the story, and I can't believe we're still doing this same shit today. It's why I hate most rom-coms. Even worse, was that it took about half and hour for them to get together after that part, and it really hurt the overall movie. In 1934 it might not have been so tiresome and played out, but I gotta rate them by my own standards today.
Stars: Three out of five.
Next, a character who yells, "STELLLAAAA!" and then a character who yells, "SHANE!"
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