1949 / 101m - USA
Comedy, Romance
1.5*/5.0*
Adam's Rib poster

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January 05, 2022

1.5*/5.0*

An old-fashioned romcom that loves to riff on the classic woman-man contradictions. Adam's Rib isn't particularly subtle about it (as if the title wasn't obvious enough) and it shouldn't be a big surprise that the situational comedy is pretty predictable. Then again, the film doesn't pretend to be anything more than basic genre work.

Adam and Amanda are two lawyers who are married to each other. They have a small scuffle about a case where a woman shot her man, the day after they discover that they're each assigned to opposing clients. Neither of them is willing to back down from the case, which is going to put a strain on their marriage.

Cukor leans heavily on the performances of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, but they fail to carry their characters beyond the stereotypical. Neither does Judy Holliday, but at least she's actually funny. The plot is pretty bland, and I'm not a big fan of situational comedy to begin with, but it's not the worst of its kind, thanks to do decent pacing and relatively short runtime.