Like other weekends of the year, this weekend I saw a movie. The one where the young woman goes out for a wild night on the town, drinking, dancing, and carousing with young men. Eventually, when she sobers up from her night out she finds out that she’s pregnant. The imminent arrival of a baby causes much trouble. Hilarity ensues. It had me laughing.
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is another of the Preston Sturges oeuvre that I received in my Netflix queue. What you thought I was talking about Knocked Up? Wait a second and I’ll get to it in a minute. The Miracle of Morgan Creek has a similar and familiar plot to that of Knocked Up, but the morals are distinctly rooted in the forties.
The young Trudy Kockenlocker (great name) finds herself pregnant AND married (I told you it was the forties) after a night of seeing the service men off to war. A combination of champagne and a knock on the head causes her to do the foolish thing of marriage and sex. In the morning she can’t remember his name. She used a fake one herself so she’ll never know who’s on the marriage license. Scandalous! It’s a low down dirty shame if the town finds out. She spends the film trying to enlist the help of her 4F childhood sweetheart, Norval Jones. Scheming with her younger sister to make her situation legitimate, they plan another sham marriage for the license. Then she can divorce the serviceman and marry Norval and make her pregnancy respectable for her, her familiy, and for the town. I told you it was old timey.
The Miracle of Morgan Creek is very much another of Sturges’s comedy of remarriage in which the second marriage makes the first one legit like The Lady Eve. Although he wasn’t married to her at first, Norval eventually gets to be the husband as decreed by law. It’s all tidied up nicely. This is a wonderful funny film. In fact, it was a big hit the year it was released in 1944. The funniest thing about it is how it got through the censors of the Hayes office. It’s basically a girl who got drunk and pregnant. That’s got to be against the code. She also wants to perpetrate bigamy, dual marriages at the same time. Weird that they could make a movie with such topics in that era. Perhaps the comedy genre makes it more acceptable. It’s a farce so what can be wrong here.
Anyway, it’s got wonderful performances. Betty Hutton does the hysterics of the knocked up Trudy Kockenlocker (great name). William Demarest as the beleaguered father puts up with it all. Dianna Lynn the younger sister, Emmy, gets to be the smart gal, saying lines that wouldn’t seem out of place coming from Jean Harrington (The Lady Eve). It’s all so fun. And funny. Sturges does it again.
I also saw Knocked Up. That ones funny, too. It was riotous. Like Sturges who relies on a cast of regulars, Judd Apatow, has his regular troop. It’s great to see these dudes working. Triumphing over the dumb tv execs who didn’t have the sense of knowing comedy gold if it smote them over the head like a hammer. I would say that Apatow follows the footsteps of Sturges. He writes and directs his own stories. After Knocked up becomes the comedy hit of the summer, he may also be considered a comedy genius.
It too starts with a night on the town where the girl has sex and gets pregnant. Yet unlike the forties, there is no marriage then sex. Just sex. Marriage maybe later. The wonderful modern world. Except what was queer about it is that the morals are just as conservative as they were back then. She doesn’t think about a shma-shmortion. She wants the baby to have a father engaged in the child rearing. Even the fact of marriage comes up to make it all work out. Would it have been any less funny for the girl not to need a man to make it all fine in the end? See Waitress for that. That’s what was bothering about the film. She didn’t need him. And he didn’t need her. In fact, when you think about it. The plot is straight out of a sitcom. Or it could be the basis of one. A more realistic plot would’ve been nice, but perhaps its just as big a farce as one of Sturges’s work. I wonder if Knocked Up’s modern setting makes it harder to imagine if it was a farce.
There are some truly hilarious scenes. The pregnant sex. The crowning. Vegas on shrooms. Doc Brown. Then again, Apatow likes his movies long. Should comedies last longer than two hours? The best I can say about that is this one didn’t feel as long as his other films. The 40 Year Old Virgin was 30 minutes too long as was Ron Burgundy and you knew it. Knocked Up didn’t feel like it. Some scenes could’ve been excised, but it seems that Apatow has learned to move things along. Thank god.
I should’ve put my Waitress review here too. It seems to fall into this film genre, the unexpected mother. Weird that I would see a set of disparate films with the same plot. When are the hobo films coming then?
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek: 4 of 5 stars.
Knocked Up: 4 of 5 stars.
