Best movie of this year hands down!

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"The Bride Came C.O.D" is sustained by the performances of James Cagney and Bette Davis, who both manage to overcome a weak screenplay. Both actors manage to demonstrate a talent for light comedy. The laughs aren't exactly plentiful but at least the film isn't depressing or melancholic. Cagney and Davis have brilliant on- screen chemistry and they should have been paired up more often and in better movies. Davis is a rich socialite who is about to marry a famous and rather pompous musician - Jack Carson. They are about to fly to another state so they can be married in secret. Her father doesn't particularly care for the planned marriage and wants to stop it. Cagney as a pilot, is employed to keep Davis from tying the knot but things don't exactly go according to plan! The scenes of Cagney and Davis alone in the desert and then spotting a seemingly deserted town are probably the best in the film. Although the film isn't a very long one, it outstays its welcome about 20 minutes before the end. A lot of the film is tiresome and the comedy "Torrid Zone" is much better (also with James Cagney).

Bette Davis and James Cagney are professionals and so is director William Keighley. They may have had to brave sweltering temperatures in Death Valley, but they have focused on the material and turned out an above-average picture. The script is rather intelligent and has a lot to say about the conditions these characters (and actors) are experiencing.Regarding the actual production of the film, it is said the stars did not want to do the project, that they did not get along, and that a rewrite was ordered. All of that seems irrelevant when one looks at the finished product; it is clear to see that this is a great screwball comedy and it works better than a lot of other films that attempt to cover similar territory.

When Meryl Streep first became humorous in "She Devil", everybody was shocked that the star of "Sophie's Choice" and "Out of Africa" could be funny. Why? They didn't remember Bette Davis in this or "June Bride", Joan Crawford in "Love on the Run" or "They All Kissed the Bride", Katharine Hepburn in "Bringing Up Baby" or "The Philadelphia Story" or Barbara Stanwyck in "The Lady Eve" or "Christmas in Connecticut"? Even a "drama queen" can get loose every once in a while, and here, Bette makes her drama queen society débutante one of the funniest characters in screwball comedy history. Opposite James Cagney (away from gangster or serious tough guy roles, although his pilot is a bit of a tough guy), Davis is trying to escape her tyrannical father (Eugene Palette) to elope with staid radio star Jack Carson, and Cagney is hired by pops to kidnap her. Thanks to Davis's interference, the plane crashes in the desert, and Cagney and Davis fight, fall in love, feud over her freedom, and end up in many hysterically funny predicaments. One of those concerns Cagney's reaction to a slap across the face he receives from the temperamental Ms. D.Everything explodes into riotous humor when they encounter the reclusive Henry Travers who lives in an abandoned ghost town where even the ghosts seem to have skipped out. Travers, who loves people as long as he's nowhere near him, at first thinks that Cagney is guilty of her kidnapping, but soon learns otherwise, and Cagney is free to try to tame the shrewish Bette who isn't about to admit she is gaining feelings for her abductor. They end up in abandoned coal mine where, thanks to Davis's attempt to escape, the entrance is blocked, and Cagney teaches her a hysterical lesson. Then, Carson and Palette arrive, along with cop William Frawley, and everything ends up in a farcial delightful conclusion where Davis meets her biggest desert nemesis once again: an ill-place cactus that keeps greeting her in a most inconvenient place.While Davis had done comedy before ("The Golden Arrow" and "It's Love I'm After"), this was the real first time where she got to let her hair down and play dirty, and she is very funny. Cagney uses his dancing talents as his comic timing seems almost choreographed, and Travers is a delight with his lovable reclusive grouch getting to be sentimental with such reflections as his love of weddings so great he married three times just to go through the ceremony. Palette, Carson and Frawley also offer amusing performances, but it is Davis, Cagney and Travers who are given the funniest material. While the heyday of screwball comedy was slowly winding down, this is one of the better later ones, if not quite Preston Sturges still a delightfully entertaining romp in the cactus patch.

Cagney and Davis fans will want to give this one a try and for completists it will deliver a fair amount of fun. However most of the story is rather hokey, and even though the chemistry between the principals don't seem to be what you might expect from a pair of romantic leads, they do spar verbally rather well, which is what I look for in any good screwball comedy. The pair worked before in 1934's "Jimmy the Gent", another picture featuring snappy dialog in which Cagney had a stronger presence than his co-star at the time. This time out they're about on equal footing, with Cagney's character taking pains to stay one step ahead of oil heiress Joan Winfield (Davis), her fiancée Allen Brice (Jack Carson), and authorities determined to capture the man who kidnapped the wealthy socialite.Some of the attempts at slapstick seem forced, as in repeated landings of Miss Davis on various cactus plants, the first time requiring Cagney's help in extracting the offending needles. One wonders what might have been going through Miss Davis' mind as this scene was being filmed, or those of theater goers of the era who already had an entirely different impression of the celebrated actress. For me, the best scenes were those involving Pop Tolliver (Harry Davenport), as demonstrated in the understated handling of his first breakfast meeting with the pair ('You take bacon too.'), and later his surreptitious partnership with Steve Collins (Cagney) to outwit the authorities.The 'C.O.D.' business of the title references the basic plot element of the story - Collins, seeing an opportunity to pay off his airplane, haggles with Joan Winfield's father (Eugene Palette) to deliver his unmarried daughter before an elopement seals the deal. At ten dollars a pound they strike a bargain, eliciting a mid-flight response from Miss Winfield that would frustrate Cagney's character throughout the picture - "You're not even good enough for the cuss words I know."