You know those two-child families in which the children both look the same and yet, paradoxically, one child is much prettier than the other? You Can’t Take It with You is the ugly sister to It’s A Wonderful Life, a similar film, but ridiculously superior in every.single.way a film can be superior.
The similarities between You Can’t Take It with You and It’s A Wonderful Life are numerous, beginning with the bumper sticker title. Both films were directed by Frank Capra; both star James Stewart and Lionel Barrymore. Both invoke a higher power, often, during the runtime. Both have a middle class fellow calling a wealthy baron a “failure of a man” for being wed to money above all else and both have a passing-the-hat scene to get a well-loved local out of trouble. Both provide unnecessary use of the word “Sycamore.” Most importantly, either film serves as one of the key stepping-stones in the chain between John Wilkes Booth and Kevin Bacon (5). You read that right; I wish I were responsible for the research.
Anthony Kirby (Edward Arnold) is a successful banker … well, a successful playah (think Trump, only with a brain). He has a plan to ruin a competitor by buying all the real estate surrounding the other guy’s factory. I’m sorry, how does that work exactly? Businesses aren’t Go boards. Forget it, he’s rolling. Tony Kirby (James Stewart) is Anthony’s worthless son (think Don Jr., only nice). Tony is a VP at his father’s bank, a really well-earned position, where he does nothing but woo the company steno, Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur). In modern parlance, none of Tony’s role, nor his actions, are right. But it’s James Stewart, so whatchagonnado?
Meanwhile, Alice belongs to the only family holding out on Anthony Kirby’s full 12-block monopoly. Grandpa Martin Vanderhof (Barrymore) owns the only property the Kirbys cannot buy, and Anthony Sr. has stooped to underhanded means to take the property away.
The film exists for two reasons: 1) to give us romance between Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur and 2) to highlight Grandpa Vanderhof’s circus-like collection of mildly-entertaining goofs. See, Gramps believes that people should live and be as they wish, which is a fantastic sentiment in a world where money doesn’t exist. Gramps appears on crutches because he broke his leg sliding down the banister. He “always wanted to be on crutches.” His granddaughter pirouettes through life, constantly dancing from one room to another. Her husband plays the xylophone; her mother writes because a typewriter was mistakenly delivered. Two goofs in the basement spend all their time making explosions happen. Some Russian dance instructor comes over every mealtime to grab a bite, and with his latest acquisition, Gramps has secured a pathetic accountant from Kirby himself, convincing him that making toys in the Vanderhof basement beats the Hell out of running figures through an adding machine.
He’s not wrong. The problem is the film never tells us where the money comes to sustain these eccentric lifestyles. I’m all for the life where you ballet from one room to another. Ideally, I’m there. Realistically, I’m American. 
We can’t even get universal health care, much less an agreement on basic universal income. Good luck with that. At one point, Gramps get into a tiff with an IRS agent over taxes, which Gramps hasn’t paid in 22 years. Gramps “doesn’t believe in taxes.”
Oh. This is a libertarian film, is it? I won’t get into it, but it seems to me the angrier you are at taxes, the more likely you are to benefit from them. Ask a liberal how much they enjoy knowing their taxes go to the military and not to health care. Even if you don’t believe that sentiment, this film came out in 1938. Imagine how well the “I don’t want my money to go the military” went over when WWII broke out just a year later … or when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.
You Can’t Take It with You is a classic in sort of the same way that Betty Boop is classic or Prohibition or the Ford Edsel is a classic. I suppose that’s a little unfair, but I don’t think the film has aged terribly well, and that was true within one year of release. The film is kinda goofy and kinda fun, and that’s kinda it. The message of “you can’t take your wealth with you, so you may as well live a more care-free life down here” resonates a great deal clearer in this film’s Prom Queen sister, It’s A Wonderful Life. There was a reason the theater I saw this one in was empty. I liked You Can’t Take It with You ok, but I didn’t need to take it with me.
There once was a family of nuts
Who thought all other lives lacked guts
They sashayed away
All night and all day
And had the income of bomb-diffusing klutz
Rated “Passed,” 126 Minutes
Director: Frank Capra
Writer: Robert Riskin, George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart
Genre: It’s A Wonderful Lite
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Classics hounds
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you don’t ever see b&w, this is no place to start
