IMDb plot summary: An acerbic critic wreaks havoc when a hip injury forces him to move in with a Midwestern family.
Directed by William Keighley. Starring Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, and Monty Woolley.
The Man Who Came to Dinner follows a famous but ill-tempered writer (played by Monty Woolley) who ends up injuring himself in a small rural town and needing to stay there through the holidays. We watch him making unreasonable demands of his hosts, inserting himself into their business, and disrupting their lives. This is clearly meant as a comedy, but Bette Davis as the author's longsuffering assistant is the only person we can really root for in this story, and she's one of the ones who goes through the most emotional turmoil at the hands of her boss, so I mostly found myself feeling bad for her and hating our titular man who came to dinner. I think there's supposed to be a begrudging "he's the worst but it's all going to work out" love-hate relationship with him, but I just hated him, and it made it hard to buy into any level of heartwarming the ending is meant to be. The dialogue is witty and there are some good one-liners in here, but other than that, it doesn't work for me as a story, much less a holiday story, and I'm not likely to rewatch it any time soon.
How it entered my Flickchart:
The Man Who Came to Dinner < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The Man Who Came to Dinner > National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Man Who Came to Dinner < No Highway in the Sky
The Man Who Came to Dinner > Murder!
The Man Who Came to Dinner > Rancho Notorious
The Man Who Came to Dinner < Bully
The Man Who Came to Dinner > Hal King
The Man Who Came to Dinner < Ready Player One
The Man Who Came to Dinner < Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The Man Who Came to Dinner > No Sudden Move
The Man Who Came to Dinner > Night Falls on Manhattan
The Man Who Came to Dinner < Coraline
Final spot: #2475 out of 3827, or 35%.
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