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Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer ... see more see more... , Ann Miller , Spring Byington , Samuel S. Hinds , Donald Meek , H.B. Warner , Halliwell Hobbes , Dub Taylor , Mary Forbes , Lillian Yarbo , Clarence H. Wilson , Josef Swickard , Ann Doran , Christian Rub , Charles Lane , Harry Davenport , Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson , Stanley Andrews , Frank Austin , Irving Bacon , Harry A. Bailey , Joe Bernard , Gladys Blake , Beatrice Blinn , Ward Bond , Joe Bordeaux , Charles Brinley , James Burke , Eddy Chandler , Wallis Clark , Chester Clute , Nick Copeland , Anne Cornwall , Nell Craig , Beatrice Curtis , Dick Curtis , Sidney D'Albrook , Howard Davies , Edgar Dearing , Vernon Dent , Kay Deslys , Lester Dorr , Roland DuPree , Oliver Eckhardt , James Farley , Eddie Fetherstone , James Flavin , Bess Flowers , Byron Foulger , Almeda Fowler , Dick French , Jack Gardner , Joe "Corky" Geil , Jesse Graves , Robert Greig , Carlton Elliott Griffin , Kit Guard , Chuck Hamilton , John Hamilton , Sam Harris , Edward Hearn , Russell Hicks , John Ince , Paul Irving , Boyd Irwin , Eddie Kane , Edward Keane , Pert Kelton , Bob Kortman , Margaret Mann , Edwin Maxwell , Ralph McCullough , Charles McMurphy , James Millican , Clive Morgan , Gene Morgan , Wedgewood Nowell , Georgia O'Dell , Dagmar Oakland , Fred Parker , Blanche Payson , George C. Pearce , Edward Peil Sr. , Lee Phelps , Hilda Plowright , Doris Rankin , Frances Raymond , Dick Rush , Harry Semels , Al Seymour , Frank Shannon , Edwin Stanley , Rosemary Theby , Laura Treadwell , John Tyrrell , Dorothy Vernon , Walter Walker , Pierre Watkin , Pat West , Lawrence Wheat , Ian Wolfe , William Arnold , Bill Dill , Louis King , Frank Mills , Bruce Mitchell , Carlie Taylor , Jack Grant , Ernie Shields , Bert Starkey , Lou Davis , Homer Dickinson , Florence Dudley , Betty Farrington , Dutch Hendrian , Harry Hollingsworth , Alice Keating , Bill Lally , Eva McKenzie , Ed Randolph , C.L. Sherwood , Victor Travers , Bessie Wade , Eugene Anderson Jr. , Starrett Ford , Belle Johnstone , Stella LeSaint , Tina Marshall , Bruce Sidney , Harry B. Stafford , Jane Tallent , Pearl Varvell , Bud Wiser , Alex Woloshin , Dorothy Babbs

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's whimsical Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play You Can't Take It With You was transformed into a paean to populism by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Ris... read more read more...kin. This is the story of the zany Sycamore household, presided over by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), a former businessman who has turned his back on commerce to enjoy life. At the Sycamores', everyone does just what he or she pleases. Penny Sycamore (Spring Byington), Grandpa's daughter, has become a novelist because someone delivered a typewriter to her home by mistake. Penny's husband makes firecrackers in his basement with the help of Mr. DePinna (Halliwell Hobbes), an iceman who showed up at the Sycamore doorstep one day and never left. Their daughter, Essie (Ann Miller), imagines that she's a prima ballerina, even though her dour teacher, Boris (Mischa Auer), assesses her work with, "Confidentially, it steenks!" Essie's husband, Ed (Dub Taylor), who'd rather play a xylophone than work, spends his free time selling Essie's candy, wrapping each package in paper from a used printing press that dispenses anarchistic slogans. The one normal member of the household is Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur), in love with wealthy Tony Kirby (James Stewart). Naturally, when the stuffy, aristocratic Kirbys come to the Sycamores' for dinner, the event is a disaster, capped with the arrest of everyone in the household. Hart and Kaufman's third act found the previously judgmental Kirby softening his attitude toward the freewheeling Sycamore clan, admitting that he's never had so much fun in his life. Screenwriter Riskin altered the focus of the play by throwing out the third act and concentrating upon Tony Kirby's father, Kirby Sr., who as played by Edward Arnold is transformed from a stock stuffed shirt into a ruthless, grasping tycoon, eager to buy up every house on the Sycamores' block to make room for a munitions plant. The film thus became the story of Kirby's regeneration at the hands of the carefree Sycamores. Enough of the play's screwball elements are retained to compensate for Riskin's speechifying and plot distortions (though the softening of one of the play's vital ingredients, Grandpa's refusal to pay his income tax, borders on the sacrilegious). You Can't Take It With You earned several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director (Capra's third Oscar). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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28 critics

Unrated, 2 hr. 6 min.

Directed by: Frank Capra

Release Date: August 23, 1938

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DVD Release Date: February 18, 2003

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Flixster Reviews (652)

  • cosmo313
    February 29, 2012
    cosmo313
    This is Frank Capra's Oscar winning adaptation of a play about a family who helps show a wealthy financier that there's much more to life than money.

    Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur) is the only person in her eccentric family who seems rather normal. She falls in love with a nice y... read moreoung guy (James Stewart) whose parents are incredibly wealthy and don't approve of his relationship to Alice, nor his desire to marry her. Alice tries to change Tony's parents's minds by inviting the mto dinner, but, thanks to her family, things don't go as planned.

    All in all, this is typical Capra schmaltz: sentimental, charming, hard to really hate, and very populist. I enjoyed the film, but it's overrated, and maybe not necessarily deserving of Best Picture. The problem is not the message or the acting from an excellent cast (which includes a delightful Lionel Barrymore), but the execution. The first half is slow, meandering, and thigns don't really pick up or get interesting until the latter half. Even then, the film is predicatble, and doesn't really do anything new or groundbreaking.

    However, it is still pretty entertaining, well-meaning, and humorous, so, despite it's flaws, it's an old fashioned feel-good film worthy of a watch.
  • fb1664868775
    October 18, 2011
    fb1664868775
    What negative comment could anyone give about this film. Truly uplifting and endlessly entertaining. Capra was the master.
  • jamers2011
    June 28, 2011
    jamers2011
    So perfect! I love Frank Capra. Simple, funny, real, memorable, and thought provoking.
  • MeetMeinMontauk
    July 1, 2010
    MeetMeinMontauk
    I had NO idea Jimmy Stewart could be so young. But what a funny, sweet social comedy!! I thought it was really great even with it's rather typical storyline. And all the awkward moments were absolutely hysterical. I loved it and I'm not a big Jimmy Stewart girl!
  • garyX
    February 23, 2010
    garyX
    James Stewart plays the son of a cold hearted tycoon who gets engaged to his secretary whose family are the antithesis of everything his snobbish upper class parents believe in. Essentially a class comedy from Frank Capra, You Can't Take It With You is one of those films that exp... read moreounds the philosophy of "money isn't everything", and being Capra, you know right from the outset how it's going to end. Stewart and Jean Arthur make a cute couple, although I couldn't help the feeling that Jimmy just wasn't in it enough, spending most of his time stood in the background smirking at the proceedings. Capra usually treads the line between sincerity and sentimentality with supreme skill, but this one all felt a little too contrived to me. Jean Arthur's family felt too forced into screwball wackiness to the point where I found them irritating rather than endearing and Edward Arnold's change of heart at the end was a little too convenient and unconvincing. I would also have to say that I found the "hero" of the piece Lionel Barrymore a little too self righteous for my tastes; I personally thought his spiteful attack on Arnold in the jail cell came across as plain obnoxious. Not funny enough to be considered screwball comedy and too implausible to be considered drama, this is far from Capra's best.
  • LWOODS04
    September 1, 2009
    LWOODS04
    Watched this movie on a rainy day with my mom who loves these old movies. I really enjoyed it. Thought it was clever, and funny. There are a lot of different characters in this movie and they are very entertaining to say the lease. I liked this movie very much.
  • dunmyer
    July 13, 2009
    dunmyer
    I'm doing some research on early American cinema and watching some old films as part of that. Frank Capra's "You Can't Take It With You" won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1938, but I found it only slightly entertaining. There are some very funny and charming scenes, but there are... read more far more that are quite flat. The film is also overly long, suffering from a terribly slack editing job. The direction I found to be predictable and pedestrian, and I didn't find anything special about the acting.

    It's surprising to me that this film won the Oscar. Capra also won for Best Director. The Academy appears to have been excessively in love with Capra in the 30s. He was nominated for Best Director five times that decade and won thrice! He's probably the only director in history to dominate the Oscars for an entire decade. His films were also routinely nominated for Best Picture, although they only won twice ("It Happened One Night" is the other).

    The storyline of "Can't Take It With You" focuses on a young couple (James Stewart and Jean Arthur, neither of whom were nominated for Oscars) who wishes to wed. However, he's from a wealthy upper-crust family, and she's from a family of modest means. As is often the case in 1930s films, class tensions abound; and of course the rich people are depicted as bad guys.

    The best thing about the film is the girl's quixotic family. Every person in the brood is encouraged to discover his or her unique talents and live them to the hilt. A typical evening with this family involves one child spinning across the room in pirouettes, another playing the xylophone with passion, another showing off his latest invention, which usually involve fireworks, and Mom and Dad watching proudly. Music, art, and fun are everywhere. There seems to be an unlimited supply of money, despite the fact that no one works. That is of course never explained.

    The family also attracts strays, people who couldn't make it in ordinary society. They join in the fun as well. When the film is at its best, it presents a shangri-la of joie de vivre. I was impressed by the fact that some of the hangers-on were black. It was quite radical in this time to cast black actors, and the producers deserve extra kudos for that.

    But none of the characters have any depth. They are ultra-crude caricatures, and most of the time the zaniness is predictable. Capra doesn't do much more than give them a big set and have them prance across it.

    Equally predictable and shallow is the struggle between the families, which rides hard on every stereotype imaginable. Nothing original is brought to the table.
  • bottcorecords1
    May 21, 2009
    bottcorecords1
    Frank Capra uses his usual cast of players in a film about the romance between a girl from an eccentric family and a boy from a high society family. Jimmy Stewart is the boy and Edward Arnold is the father, in what is probably the best part (and character in the movie). The fathe... read morer is a bank president, and very powerful person. He's trying to organize a merger between several big companies, and is building a factory for this merged company. Unfortunately, there is one hold-out living on the land he wishes to build the factory, and he is refusing to sell. That hold-out just happens to be the grandfather of the girl. The grandfather presides over a house of nuts, who don't work but somehow can afford servants. They all seem to practice at artistic pursuits they're unsuited to, and therefore are very bad at. Anyway, despite the movie's dubious political message and the fact that Capra would use certain aspects of this film to greater effect in "It's A Wonderful Life", the movie is extraordinarily charming, and this is in no small part due to the wonderful performances by the cast. Which brings me back to Edward Arnold's performance. He could've been made to simply be an evil, greedy man who in the last act, sees the error of his ways. It's quite a pleasant surprise to find the character has some depth. Easy, emotional scenes could be seen as pandering to the audience, and the ending seems really abrupt, but once again, with performances this good, it's easy to overlook the sloppy bits.
  • mjgildea
    March 14, 2009
    mjgildea
    You Can't Take It With You falls into the category of movie I love so much that I want to kick myself in the ass for not seeing it sooner. Many call it a screwball comedy, which at moments it definitely is especially during the restaurant and courtroom scenes. But I'd say it smel... read morels more like a drama since I got misty with happiness at the end when Edward Arnold cracked. Frank Capra's direction as always is flawless here and the cast is astonishing. And Jesus was Jean Arthur a doll...!
  • kenstachnik
    August 20, 2008
    kenstachnik
    So Capra-esque your teeth will hurt

    and I'm sorry, I don't care if this did win the Academy Award.
    Robin Hood is the best film of 1938. Period. (Maybe Angels with Dirty Faces)

View All You Can't Take It with You Reviews

Critic Reviews

February 17, 2009
TIME Magazine

Easily the No. 1 cinema comedy of 1938. Full Review

Roy Chartier
February 20, 2008
Roy Chartier, Variety

The tempo is generally fast and there are no sudden spurts or sharp letdowns. Full Review

Jonathan Rosenbaum
January 1, 2000
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

There are still some laughs and entertainment to be found here, but forget about fidelity to the original. Full Review

James Berardinelli
August 23, 1938
James Berardinelli, ReelViews

You Can't Take it with You was a tonic to a Depression-weary country beginning to right itself economically. Full Review

Nell Minow
December 29, 2010
Nell Minow, Common Sense Media

Kid-friendly Capra classic stars a quirky family. Full Review

Robert Levin
June 7, 2009
Robert Levin, Film School Rejects

A classic case of good old-fashioned American optimism. Full Review

Laura Bushell
February 20, 2008
Laura Bushell, Film4

Demonstrates Capra's skill at tweaking the heartstrings as well as the funny bone. Full Review

Emma Cochrane
February 20, 2008
Emma Cochrane, Empire Magazine

Its stage origins might be all too obvious, but the excellent ensemble cast makes it an enjoyable breeze, and the in-laws meeting scene is farce comedy at its best. Full Review

Dennis Schwartz
January 3, 2007
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

The usual sentimental corny uplifting melodrama from director Frank Capra. Full Review

December 12, 2006
TV Guide's Movie Guide

An entertaining, if saccharine film, packed with enough loony activity to keep the laughs coming from start to finish. Full Review

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You Can't Take It with You Trivia

  • Who played in "You cant take it with you", "Pot of Gold" and "the man who shot liberty valance"?  Answer »
  • What two movies have James Stuart and Lionel Berrymore been in together?  Answer »
  • In which movie did actor James Stuart, play a wealthy young man marrying into an eccentric family?  Answer »
  • The following were nominated for an Academy Award for Outstanding Production in 1938. (Note: ten productions were nominated that year; I randomly picked four others from the list to include with the winner for this quiz.) Which production won the Oscar? HINT: Oh, yes, I can!  Answer »
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