The Lady Eve is the worst movie of all time

The Lady Eve. "There's just one thing. I feel it's only fair to tell you. It would never have happened except she looked so exactly like you." ... "They look too much alike to be the same." ... "Positively the same dame!" Fucking idiot. A woman grifts a guy multiple times, and he just thinks she's a look-alike. Insanity. 

Been on a Preston Sturges kick. Added a bunch of flicks on the Criterion Channel recently. I'm not sure if I think he is terrible or not. This movie, though. The fucking audacity of this movie. Considered a classic, both my female companion and I thought otherwise. 

Gist of the flick is that a trio of grifters go to cheat Henry Fonda's character, an adventurous heir to a brewery fortune, but the dame falls in love. So after they take him for some of his money, she decides to do it again, and this fucking dipshit falls for it because he is too dumb to live. 

Movie stars Barbara Stanwyck from the fantastic Billy Wilder flick Double Indemnity as the lady grifter, the "legendary" Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, and William Demarest who is an old guy you might recognize from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Demarest or Stanwyck win the movie. Demarest is a great hard-ass straight man, while Stanwyck more or less carries the movie. 

Not exactly the wokest movie I've ever seen. A lot of stupid women talk. Example: "A girl of sixteen's practically an idiot anyway, so I can't very well blame you for something that was practically done by somebody else." Thank you, oh wise one who can't even recognize the same woman. Of course, Fonda says this to Stanwyck's character, who is grifting the shit out of him. It is insane, really. 

While Fonda does a great Lincoln or Tom Joad or whatever, he is not good at comedy. Dude is stiff as fuck. There were times when I questioned whether his character had a traumatic brain injury or something. Again--sort of hammering this home--Stanwyck comes back into his life as another person... which he believes because he thinks if it was the same woman, she would’ve disguised herself... Are you fucking kidding me, bra? I thought he couldn't fucking believe this because it was so audacious. He had to fucking know, right? But apparently not. He's just insanely dumb. He deserves to be grifted. 

Nor did I find the movie all that funny. A lot of the humor revolves around Fonda having to change his dinner jackets like five or six times. Maybe it is a metaphor or something. Plus, I think, a lot of the humor is based on close talking and the idea that Fonda has an unseen erection (see above photo)--which might actually be kind of funny in retrospect. 

Maybe you should watch this flick just to see this for the sheer bizarreness. I mean, holy shit. I'm sort of still in disbelief. Fonda is such an amazing tool that I may never get over it.