AFI Movies: #51 The Philadelphia Story

Where I advocate for remaking an 85 year old movie.

Sep 03, 2024

If you missed my first post where I explain what this is and how I’m scoring things, here you go.

Most of the time, whenever I see that an old movie is being remade, or that Hollywood has decided we need another pointless sequel or prequel to a long-dead franchise, I get a little frustrated. We have so many fun and talented filmmakers and actors that I’d love to see what they could all do with fresh, original stories, rather than being pigeon-holed by what the major film studios consider to be safe from a box office perspective.

However, and this is probably sacrilege to some, I’d love to see a remake of The Philadelphia Story.

For context, if you haven’t seen it, The Philadelphia Story is a romantic comedy starring three of the biggest movie stars of all time (Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart), where Hepburn plays the daughter of a socialite family in Philadelphia, is getting married, and is basically blackmailed into allowing two journalists to photograph and write about the days leading up to the wedding. Stewart plays one of the journalists, while Grant plays the ex-husband of Hepburn’s character, who organizes the arrival of the journalists. Basically, the whole movie is just a chance for all the actors to show off their skills as actors and the amazing chemistry they all have together.

With a few changes, I think an updated version of The Philadelphia Story would be a lot of fun. There are so many amazing actors that I think could fill the three main roles in a modern remake, and I’d definitely pay to see it. Unfortunately for my little thought experiment, I’m not sure The Philadelphia Story is valuable enough IP for a major studio to pay the money that it would probably require to hire my dream cast of this imaginary film.

For now, I’ll just go back to writing about the version of the film we do have.

Let’s see how it scores:

Entertainment Value- 1.5/2

I just want to open up this section by saying that I’m not opposed to older comedies. There are a lot of movies that came out well before this that have made me laugh, including some that I’ve written about on this list. However, The Philadelphia Story just kind of missed my funny bone I guess. Honestly, I didn’t even realize it was a comedy until I was reading a description of it online after I watched it. Normally, I think that a comedy being unrecognizable as such would make a movie so bad it would be painful to watch, but this movie still works even if the jokes don’t land or have aged poorly. The acting is still great, and the story does enough to keep you interested the entire time.

Correctness- 0/2

Unfortunately, another pretty good movie is going to score lower than it has to because of a couple of things that just did not age well at all. First, this movie came out in 1940, so as you can imagine, there is not a person of color in sight. Secondly, the opening scene of this movie, which briefly shows the background of Hepburn and Grant’s divorce, shows Grant’s character giving Hepburn’s character a shove to the floor. Later, it is also suggested that he may have at some point “socked” her. Neither of these things is addressed as particularly shameful, and neither deters the two of them from rekindling their romance by the end of the film, which I find problematic and worthy of some deductions here.

Influence- 2/2

Even though this movie wasn’t completely for me, I still recognize that a lot of people grew up with it and have wonderful memories tied to it that make The Philadelphia Story a timeless classic to a lot of people. In fact, the novel I’m reading right now (Book Lovers by Emily Henry) makes reference to this specific movie, and how the protagonist and her sister found comfort in watching it together and how it brought them good memories of their mother. I’m sure there have been other movies where I have missed this, but something about it makes sense to me with The Philadelphia Story.

“Rewatchability”- 1.5/2

I have already made a mental note to revisit this one once I am done with this project. I think I will probably like it much more on a rewatch.

Technical Score- 1/2

I’ve mentioned the acting in this one1, but there’s nothing else on a technical level that I really noticed as being spectacular.

Overall- 6/10

My grading rubric is only going to make me give even more ridiculous scores to universally beloved movies going forward, so I just wanted to acknowledge right now that it is a really stupid grading rubric.

I can’t believe I’m halfway done.

Words With Peck

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