10/10
A Screwball Comedy Classic
31 December 1998
The votes for this movie must have been based on political correctness, for based on hilarity, assuming one has a healthy sense of the absurd, this film rates a solid 10.

True, those who are thin-skinned will find the racial and gender and, uh, regional send-offs deplorable. However, since the film is a brilliant satire on the phoniness of those who take themselves too seriously, it is natural that when these people see themselves in it, they will be offended.

"Nothing Sacred" refers not only to the values hypocrisy seeks to destroy, but to the sacred cows the film seeks to topple. Carol Lombard has never been lovelier or more picaresque, and Frederic March plays a great foil for the barely plausible goings on.

One of the irritants in the highly regarded "Bringing up Baby" is the completely implausible haplessness of Cary Grant's character and the determined obtuseness of Kathrine Hepburn's. In "Nothing Sacred" there are no such distractions; it is the superior film.

Other joys of the film are the delightful vignettes, such as a dipsomaniacal country doctor's tirade against journalists (In vino veritas, indeed!) and the transparently phony patriotism at a strip club.

Filmed in glorious early technicolor.
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