Rating: 
Summary: This Movie Has It All!
Review: I watched this movie on the AMC channel on a gloomy, rainy Saturday and it instantly became one of my all-time favorites! It's hard to believe that it was filmed back in the forties, because it portrays the same social dilemmas that touch all of us over fifty years later. Very entertaining as extremely entertaining as you will be laughing one minute and crying the next. Filmaker Sullivan is determined to make a serious film about the plight of the homeless and sets out with just the clothes on his back. Frustrated, he is continuously "rescued" by his elaborate Hollywood crew and winds up pairing up with the lovely Veronica Lake. The movie takes a turn as Sullivan gets himself into a bad turn of events, but the resolve at the end is wonderful. Wish they still made movies like this that become part of who you are once you watch them. Great for general audiences - Highest recommendation!
Rating:
Summary: THIS PAIRING WAS MADE IN HEAVEN
Review: With rapt attention their tightly gripped love, lust and verve explode off the screen. Their intense caring for each other can only lead to a permanent pairing and a deepining of intimacy; To live as one.Please come back to our world, as it is, and lead us into the frolic of days gone by. Bring your loving reparte,and make us laugh, participate and enjoy until tears flood open and our sides hurt. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Sullivan's Travels
Review: This is a really nice film. I guess what I like about it most as a movie fan is that its moral gives you a perspective enjoying movies that sticks with you. Its interesting because movies don't often reflect on themselves. The lesson Sullivan learns at the end of his travels is that important movies are good. But there is something perhaps even more important about a funny little comedy or adventure film that entertains the average joe and takes him away from his troubles for a while.... I am not much in to black and white film starlets but this one has a sizzle factor right up there with seeing Rita Hayworth sing "Put the Blame on Mame" in "Gilda".... I am happy it is coming out on DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Sturges to Coen
Review: To those who don't "get" O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU, you have to see this film first. The Coen brothers even include a homage to the first film where the kid takes Sullivan (Joel MacCrea) on the looniest ride of his life, only to find himself back home: to Veronica Lake: "Oh, I don't know . . . I suppose it's Hollywood!" "O Brother . . ." is obviously the film Sullivan would have made after his experiences in the first film. It is not a bunch of cheap jokes. Neither film is. The newer film is a true tribute to the former. Mal Bowes
Rating:
Summary: Utterly Delightful
Review: It's hard to go wrong with the six films Preston Sturges did during his peak period from 1940-1947. SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS is his masterpiece, hitting all its marks with uncanny oddball perfection. The storyline of a bigtime Hollywood director desiring to make a social commentary with his next serious project, "O Brother Where Art Thou", is at times outrageously funny and repeatedly absurd. But the strange thing is how throughout the film there are so many poignant moments, done with utmost affection and delight, that its impossible to call this just a comedy. It's a film full of heart, lovable in its natural lunacy, utterly delightful and endlessly entertaining to watch, galloping ahead with rapid-fire screwball dialogue. "This picture is an answer to communists. It shows we're awake and not dunking our heads in the sand like a bunch of ostriches. I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions, stark realism, the problems that confront the average man. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity, a true canvas of the suffering of humanity!" "But with a little sex in it?" "With a little sex in it."
Rating:
Summary: Pointed Ditziness
Review: Good rather than great, flawed primarily by triple-reverse "filmwright"/auteur pointiness. Sturges explicated himself this way: "'Sullivan's Travels' is the result of an urge, an urge to tell some of my fellow filmwrights that they were getting a little too deep-dish and to leave the preaching to the preachers." Appropriate to name names, or name? Sturges did, in dialogue. Frank Capra. "Sullivan's Travels" followed (& was derived from) "It Happened One Night", "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town", "You Can't Take It with You", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". Capra's "Meet John Doe" was 1941, perhaps concurrently produced, though "Sullivan's Travels" was Sturges 1941 #2, extensively rewritten on the fly (for Veronica Lake pregnancy workaround). Neither Capra nor Sturges outlasted the 40s as makers. The last great Capra movie, "State of the Union" (1948, Tracy/Hepburn) is a retreat into the self-protective refusal to risk position Sturges recommends? The last great Sturges film, "Unfaithfully Yours" (1948, a disastrous box-office bomb), is grand glossy entertainment. The post-war American audience was exhausted/indifferent, didn't need or wish to be engaged as EITHER Capra or Sturges hoped. Capra, a Dickensian (art is NOT life) romantic/radical, was doomed by forces beyond his understanding, incurious audience, HUAC-related paranoia. The failure of Sturges seems less inevitable, more self-scripted. What would destroy Sturges was an easy/natural extension of the argument he had elected to present/preach in 1941, irony eating its own tail? "Sullivan's Travels" lapses immediately in opening note written to the screen, then in sermon by snooty/smart butler, again as what might have been as one of the grandest movie scenes of the 40s is undercut by cheap/false/brazen ref to Disney plus what amounts to a sitcom laughtrack, finally by Sullivan reiterating the sermon in defense of disconnected ditziness in closing, just in case anyone missed it. Sturges kills his horse right away, in writing, bludgeons the carcass in passing, pounds it liberally in the end. Why? Does Sturges want respect, fear that there ain't room in Hollywood, or Dodge, for both Capra & Sturges? Had Capra said something needlessly nasty about pure slapstick, empty satire? Does Sturges BELIEVE his own explication/excuse, really? Should the failure of Sturges be understood in exactly the terms proposed in "Sullivan's Travels"? The greatest Disney animations (Snow White/Fantasia/Pinocchio) were done before 1941. The long/ongoing artistic decline (commercial rise) of Disney into the conglomerate it has become had already begun. Sturges can be forgiven for insufficient prescience, but what goes around comes around? Sturges himself was constitutionally incapable of the level of pandering escapism Disney would gradually perfect (as animation &/OR flawless saccharine yeller dog story). A good movie in spite of itself, or in spite of how Sturges sticks to critical outline, or agenda/schtick, regardless of how his art tugs at him (or us). Many grand scenes, especially the McRea/Lake diner meeting & the corrupted-by-fake/exaggerated-laughtrack chaingang visit to a black church at the heart of the matter. Direct references to this movie by Lawrence Kasdan (via the Steve Martin character) in "Grand Canyon" & by the brothers Coen in "O Brother Where Art Thou" may fool some of the people all of the time anyway, but viewing "Sullivan's Travels" can't hurt.
Rating:
Summary: Holds up very well
Review: When my son sees an old movie he always complains that they are in black and white or not funny, but when he saw this movie he laughed all the way through, just as I did. The reason I bought this movie is because of the title of the movie Sullivan was making, "O Brother, Where Art Thou", which is a great movie that should be up for best picture. While it really doesn't have much to do with the new "O Brother"(except for the poverty of some of the characters), it does share the same quirky kind of dialogue. I plan to buy more Preston Sturgis movies in the near future, and I hope they are all as good as "Sullivan's Travels".
Rating:
Summary: Amazing and perfect comedy!
Review: Super-duper comedy from master Preston Sturges! It ranks second for me only to Lady Eve(and it's close) amongst his films. Joel McCrea is such a great actor. I just love to watch him interact with people in this film. It's hilarious! He and Veronica Lake are better than swell together. Why don't you already own this?
Rating:
Summary: Difficult but ultimately successful
Review: I have never seen a Sturges film, and was eager to like this movie. I found it very uneven--the pacing was choppy and the film never seemed to hit its stride until about three quarters of the way in, in a moving scene where the members of a church invite a group of prisoners (including McCrea) in to watch a movie with them. Ultimately, though, the film bears the stamp of a distinctive talent and claims its place as an exceptional piece of filmmaking. There are also a couple of laugh-out-loud funny scenes. I had also never seen a film with Veronica Lake. She's gorgeous, and her charming performance is all the more poignant in light of how ever career ultimately ended.
Rating:
Summary: All Aboard!
Review: One of the great satires of the early forties and one of director-writer Preston Sturges's most enjoyable films. Famous movie director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), who has built his reputation with financially successful comedies and musicals, disguises himself as a bum in order to see the real America. His goal: to soak up enough "real life" so he can direct an epic screen tragedy, which his studio bosses are dead set against. On his way he meets a disillusioned actress (Veronica Lake) and a host of other interesting and amusing characters. What ensues is some of the wittiest dialogue ever written served up by some of the best character actors every assembled. The chemistry between Lake and McCrea is most believable, with Lake proving that she was a most gifted comic actress with impeccable timing. McCrea more than holds his own as the steadfast Sullivan. A wonderful slice of Americana and the fickleness of Hollywood, which hasn't changed much in the third millennium.
| 
