Better Late Then Never

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The Big Street is one of those sentimental little yarns blown up from the whimsical attractiveness of print to the harsher light of the cinema screen. It is the sort of story that Damon Runyon excels in - and here he is producing it for the screen himself! Alas, the principal pleasure in reading his stories is his very characteristic literary style - a tongue-in-cheek amalgam of East Side slang and back of Broadway jargon - that is extremely difficult to transfer to the screen without losing the bite and humor that is an essential ingredient of its flavor. One-dimensional characters which seem so amusing on the printed page are also much less appealing on the screen unless the players can achieve exactly the right balance between fancy and reality.This adaptation is only moderately successful. The direction is routine and production values are very moderate. A lot of obvious process work doesn't really help either. On the other hand, Russell Metty's lighting photography is so polished and atmospheric and the sets and costumes are so attractive as to overshadow the lack of craftsmanship in other departments. Furthermore, the cast is outstanding. True, some of the more interesting players like Eugene Pallette, Agnes Moorehead and Barton MacLane have only small parts, but Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball make a worthy team. Fonda manages to bring absolute conviction and sincerity to the incredibly naive and almost impossibly devoted Little Pinks. As for Lucille Ball, she herself and many critics regard her characterization of the willful and conceited Gloria as her finest screen performance.N.B. Similarity of the plot and principal characters to those of Midnight Cowboy (1969) should not go unnoticed. Miss Ball's singing voice was dubbed by Martha Mears.

It's always fun to spend time around the colorful characters of Damon Runyon's stories. He always wrote about eccentric New York City gamblers with hearts of gold and stylish lingo ("Guys and Dolls", "Little Miss Marker", "Lady for a Day"/"Pocketful of Miracles").Here the lovable mugs are played by an excellent cast including Ray Collins, Sam Levene, Eugene Palette, Agnes Moorehead, Millard Mitchell, and Hans Conried. Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball star, with Barton MacLane as the heavy.Runyon wrote the original story and produced this film, which tells the story of a humble busboy (Fonda) who is devoted to a selfish night club singer (Ball), even when she falls on hard times. It's got that sort of fairy tale spark evident in other Runyon stories, with the gambling community pooling their resources to help make someone's dream come true. In a way it's a love story, and in another way it's a very sad, tragic tale.Fonda's character comes across as pathetic, fawning over Ball's ungrateful diva when it is clear she is ugly on the inside. But his friends feel sorry for him and do all they can to help him help her.The greatest performances come from Ray Collins and Sam Levene as The Professor and Horsethief, respectively: the two most vocal Broadway mugs. Collins in particular is delightfully colorful. Bullfrog-throated Eugene Palette plays the part of Nicely-Nicely Johnson, made famous by Stubby Kaye in the musical "Guys and Dolls". Agnes Moorehead, in only her third film (after two Orson Welles pictures), lends lovable support. Lucille Ball is lovely and puts in a rather nice performance in an unconventional role for her.Damon Runyon's characters are always fun, and the scenes with Collins & co. buoy the story weaknesses.6.5/10

I found this film to be highly disappointing, basically I would only recommend it to Lucille Ball fans. Henry Fonda plays a guy who thinks that a selfish arrogant nightclub singer (Ball) is a goddess. He even calls her "Your Majesty". At the end of the film we're supposed to believe that Ball's character has changed her ways, magically, upon realizing that Fonda is in love with her -- somehow she didn't notice while he was wheeling her in a wheelchair from New York to Florida. The film's only real redeeming quality is the good character performances from Fonda's friends, who spout Damon Runyan dialogue with appropriate panache and rough grace. This film attempts to mix drama and comedy but fails to achieve either with anything but sporadic success.

I saw this movie with my family and we were all shocked at just how amazingly bad this film could be! On the plus side (and there is ONLY ONE), the supporting characters were really cute and their Damond Runyan dialog was hilarious (any film with Eugene Palette can't be 100% bad--in this case, only 99.44% bad). However, despite wonderful support which at least allows the film to earn a 2, everything else about this film was absolutely horrid--and I am talking about worse than THAT HAGAN GIRL, PARNELL or SWING YOUR LADY bad!!! So bad that I wonder how this movie slipped by being in the FIFTY WORST MOVIES book by Harry Medved! The very biggest problem with the film are the leads, Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball. Fonda's character is so dumb and such a chump for Lucille that he defies common sense--no one is that stupidly in love with anyone--especially someone so thoroughly unlikable! Lucille Ball, to put it bluntly, is nastier and more self-centered than Hitler or Kim Il-Jong and yet this idiot keeps calling her "your Highness" and doing everything for this horrible invalid. There's only so much sympathy ANYONE can have until they ultimately kill the person they are caring for--and Lucille was that bad!!! Because Fonda is such a sap, after a short time you stop feeling sorry for him and start hating him. Don't believe me?! Well, Lucille in her wheelchair throws a fit and insists that Fonda MUST take her to Florida for the winter. However, they have zero money--none. So, she demands that he pushes the wheelchair from New York to Florida,....and he DOES!!!!! So, not only is he totally stupid, but he does the impossible. And if this doesn't convince you Fonda is 100% stupid and too-dumb-to-live, when he commits a robbery, he accidentally lets his Social Security card fall out at the scene of the crime to identify who he was!!!!! As for Lucille, while her being truly despicable could have been a nice departure from her usual sweet or sassy roles, she truly descended to the level of almost being Satan. Do you need another example of her evil? Well, when they finally get to Florida, Lucille insists that Fonda MUST pretend to be her butler and carry her about the beach. Then, when an old boyfriend of hers shows up and sees she is handicapped, she screams at and berates Fonda!! With her being that bad and him being that dumb, the movie can't help but sink from under itself.Apart from the total unlikability of the leads, the film abounds with clichés and sappiness. The most egregious examples are when the cops find out that it was Fonda who committed the robbery but let him go because,....well I really DON'T know why!! And also, and this is the part that made our skin crawl, at the very end, Fonda lifts Lucille out of her wheelchair in front of the crowd at the huge party and SHAZAM--she can stand and actually kind of dance even though she's paralyzed!!!! At this point, mercifully, this awful film ended. Thank goodness, otherwise I might have thrown my shoe through the TV tube!!Don't watch this film unless you are at least as dumb as Fonda's character. Don't say I didn't warn you!!!