DivX Clásico

My Man Godfrey falls squarely within the screwball genre, yet stands solidly outside it, beyond it.

Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that screwball comedies in the tradition of Bringing Up Baby are just stupid. They revolve around farcical, irrational characters that don't satirically illuminate anything about humanity so much as they vex, nettle, annoy, and loathesomely make themselves unwatchable. I know you're supposed to hate Katharine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby, but she's so detestable that she's not funny.

Comedy, unless it's pure satire, has to have some central heart to make it work. You have to like somebody in the movie, even if you hate all the rest. In My Man Godfrey, that central heart is provided by the unconditionally good and good-hearted butler character (Godfrey, the "my man" of the title) played by William Powell. Though the family is in a ludicrous shambles, his rationality serves as an anchor for the film and helps to explain the screwballishness. This isn't a screwball comedy just for the sake of being one, this is a comedy with screwball characters in it, and the reason they act that way is because they're spoiled rich people with no grip on reality. So reality isn't absent from the film, it's only absent from some of its characters for believable reasons.

This all adds up to a film that is funny, but also very self-aware. It can make wry comments on the state of the human condition because it doesn't operate on an idiotic plane completely divorced from it. As I said, William Powell's butler character anchors the film and keeps its jokes legitimately funny. This is the kind of humor in Singin' in the Rain - silly and wacky, perhaps, but always aware of its own silliness and careful to not let them veer out of control.

But enough about all that theory. This movie really is funny, and it has characterizations and plot that immediately draw you in and actually develop. There are no static characters here; they all take some sort of journey that illuminates who they really are, and this helps the viewer relate to them amid the jokes. Oops, I guess I slipped back into theory again