How Deep Is Cary Grant

I just watched Destination Tokyo. It's one of the few Cary Grant films I hadn't seen from beginning to end.  Perhaps that's because it's a war film--Grant could do a lot, but his specialty was comedies and thrillers.

The story of a submarine mission to Japan, it was a big hit in 1943.  Makes sense--a big Warner Brothers production headlined by a major star.  But it doesn't hold up that well (or should I say it doesn't hold water?).  Not because of the nasty anti-Japanese stuff, which is to be expected for the times.  The problem is the two-hour-plus film is pretty elemental.  The men go on a mission, and, in-between (excruciating) comic relief (not performed by Grant) and propaganda, they get shot at, defuse bombs, torpedo ships, deal with depth charges, perform an appendectomy and so on.  While plenty of stuff happens, nothing is that surprising.

This may be because this is the first major submarine film (that I'm aware of). They were still fairly novel and the film is instructive in showing how they operate.  But since then there've been numerous sub pictures, so we expect more.

It's not bad, exactly, but ho-hum.  Grant is fine, but plays it totally straight.  If you want to see Cary Grant as a submarine commander, check out Operation Petticoat (1959). It's not a classic, but it's fun. (And was a huge hit in its day--bigger than Grant's superior film of the same year North By Northwest.)