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The Human Comedy Movie Review

The Human Comedy is a 1943 drama film directed by Clarence Brown and starring Mickey Rooney in the main role. It is a highly mediocre, frustratingly syrupy movie.

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“Broken promises are the worst.

Better not to promise anything“

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Homer Macauley lives in a small town looking after his widowed mother and younger brother. Homer’s older brother is fighting the war in Europe. Clarence Brown was never a great director despite what the Academy would suggest given the fact that he was nominated for Best Director a couple of times. But even by his standards, this is very weak and by far the worst movie that I’ve seen from him.

Apparently, his idea here was to make a point about the goodness in all of our hearts and how humanity is ultimately a wonderful thing. It’s an extremely optimist, and thus unrealistic movie that is difficult to take seriously at any given time due to its emotional manipulation and overly simplistic messaging.

The director would just hit you on the head with all of these obvious points about people’s innate goodness and the importance of close communities that it quickly became frustrating in its repetitiveness and on-the-nose execution. Admittedly, there are some scenes here that are earned in their emotion and very sweet. I will admit that. However, for the most part the flick was just ridiculously sappy and manipulative to the point that it made me laugh a couple of times and obviously not in a good way.

And I say that because the movie is called The Human Comedy and the categorization of it would suggest that it’s a comedy or at least a dramedy. It’s neither of those things. It’s just an extremely lightweight drama that doesn’t have the greatest humor and that has one of the weakest scripts to ever be Oscar-nominated.

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Mickey Rooney was fine in the main role, but as a modern viewer I fail to see why so many industry people were obsessed with this guy. He is okay, but the character that he plays is very annoying. Others also make a solid, if not memorable impression with Frank Morgan faring the best. The cinematography is actually very strong and the movie is so well lit and so gorgeously composed and also scored. It’s a shame then that the dialogue was so cringey throughout.

The Human Comedy is this very syrupy, overly optimistic and on-the-nose drama that is also emotionally manipulative and particularly badly written in its dialogue. Admittedly, it has its charms, especially in its depiction of small town communities and in its excellent cinematography, but for the most part this is a very mediocre Best Picture nominee that also somehow ended up winning an Oscar for best story in spite of the script being its worst aspect.

My Rating – 2.5