Yankee Doodle Dandy

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Another movie, another check off the AFI Top 100 list.

Based off the life of George M. Cohan, this is a very early version of the Oscar-y biopic that I never stop complaining about, except it somewhat feels like it knows it. It's entertaining, with plenty of big song and dance numbers and fun jokes, but the frame of the story is a bit absurd. Old George M. Cohan is asked to meet the president, so he walks into his office and begins telling the president his life story. Then the movie happens. Then after he's caught up to present day, he jokes about not meaning to tell his whole life story. It's a bizarre meta joke that almost feels like it's making fun of today's Oscar bait biopics that do the exact same thing but don't call themselves out for it.

This was my first James Cagney film, as I still haven't seen The Public Enemy, One, Two, Three, or any of his other classics, and I quite enjoyed his performance. He played Cohan like the over-the-top vaudevillian that he probably was, but there's also a humanity that he brings to the character. To be honest, I'm writing this a few days after seeing the film, and didn't really find anyone else in the film to be too memorable, other than Joan Leslie as Cohan's wife Mary, who was instantly likable. The director, Michael Curtiz, made The Adventures of Robin Hood three years before this, so he was clearly comfortable with large set pieces. His very next film would be Casablanca, and for many years he continued to make other films that weren't Casablanca.

To be honest, it's been a few days since I actually saw the movie and I'm already forgetting quite a bit of it. It's by no means boring or bad, it's a good time, but it never gets much deeper than that.