magic town and the wonders of netflix.

Netflix Instant is a beautiful thing. I've decided to use this time I have (every day for ten whole hours) to watch and review movies provided on Netflix. I'm now on my third movie of the day, Magic Town. You know, there's just something about Jimmy Stewart that I find incredibly attractive. Maybe it's the adorable droopy eyes, or the way he talks out of the side of his mouth, or the accent, or just the way he looks in black and white, but something about Jimmy Stewart makes me fall for him more every time I watch one of his movies. He always pulls off that suave-but-secretly-clueless-hopeless-romantic type so well. Anyone else think he's great? The basic jist of the story is that Rip Smith and his public opinion buddies are getting fired, but find a town called Grandview that matches up to the statistics of the population of the entire United States. His first big run-in with the townspeople comes at a City Council meeting, at which Mary Peterman is proposing her idea for a civic center to be built in the town. Of course, Rip cannot have this. He goes on this tirade about the beauty and virtue of the town and its people, knowing that a civic center could generate more publicity to the town, bringing in more people and ruining his perfect representative sample. As much as I love Jimmy Stewart, a pleasant surprise in this movie is Jane Wyman, who plays Mary Peterman. The movie hit the box office only a year before her divorce from Ronald Reagan was finalized, but that isn't the point. From the beginning of the movie, with her teeniest of smiles after Stewart's character Rip Smith complains to her about the article she wrote about him, she takes the cake. I love watching characters that remind me of myself. She plays it cool while he complains, typing while carrying on a conversation with him, stoic as ever until he makes a flattering response, at which point she lets another little smile slip. She's great, totally falling for him the entire time but trying to keep it hidden while he's trying to be smart and suave but failing just enough to make her purse her lips as she tries to smother her smile. They are also absolutely hilarious together as they both begin to recite poems, Rip making all attempts to get Mary to concede and stop, but she will not. I love that she's stubborn. This whole movie is great, back in the days when a little group of boys could be the junior high band for the dance and when a hug instead of a full-on makeout did not derail a relationship. Rip pretends to be an insurance agent so the people don't get suspicious, but in doing so, fools even the woman he's falling in love with. The town falls in love with him, even retracting the original article Mary wrote. You know what's coming. She's going to find out, feel used, overanalyze and wonder if anything he ever said meant anything to him or if he was just using her to get the information he wanted so he could make his money. "Yessir. I came here to do a job; everything else is just a blind alley." That's right, she overhears this too. Smooth, Rip. But don't you worry, folks, there is a happy ending. Sometimes the implausibility of old movies is just crazy enough to make you believe it could happen. The acting is great, the story is classic. I'd watch this one again.