Best movie of this year hands down!

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

SPOILERSMagnificent Dope is a fun caper. Claire (Lynn Bari) works for a newspaper, and they hold a contest to find the biggest failure. They find Tad Page (Henry Fonda), but he turns out to be more than they bargained for. They bring him back to New York, where Dwight (Don Ameche) wants to make use of him for his own evil purposes. Of course, things get wacky when they have to keep Tad from finding out to whom Claire is already engaged. You'll also see Edward Horton, (from all the Fractured Fairy Tales, and of course all those Fred Astaire films). Fun cast. Moves right along. It's quite predictable, but you'll have fun along the way. The main players had all been in the biz for many years when this was made, so everything falls right into place. Fonda had just won his Oscar for "Grapes of Wrath", so he was certainly a good choice to put in this one. Directed by Walter Lang, who had started in the silents. Lots of fun. The actors look like they are having a fun time too!

Dwight Dawson (Don Ameche) is a real huckster. He runs a 'School for Success' but all he's been able to accomplish is run up a lot of bills. In desperation, he decides to run a contest and offer some total loser $500 as well as a free course on becoming successful. Tad (Henry Fonda) appears to be such a loser and wins the prize but instead of being able to use him for publicity, Dwight is shocked to find out that Tad doesn't want the course, just the money. It seems that Tad is quite happy with his lazy life back in Vermont. So, in desperation to salvage Tad as the new poster boy for the success courses, he conspires to find a reason...any reason...to keep Tad in New York. When he learns that Tad is smitten on Dwight's girlfriend, Claire (Lynn Bari), he convinces Claire to pretend to be interested in him. How all this works out is quite enjoyable and the ending, particularly so. Not a great film by any stretch but fun and original...and it's nice to see a jerk like Dwight get his in the end!

...but fun just the same. It is almost escapist entertainment due to the fact that it just ignores the fact that WWII is going on at the time. Don Ameche plays Dwight Dawson, the owner of a school for success in New York City that doesn't really teach anything other than self confidence. Like the Wizard of Oz, he doesn't seem to be passing out anything that people don't have inside already. His business is down, and so he decides to run an ad looking for the biggest failure in America, using it as the basis for a publicity campaign to turn the contest winner into a success via his methods. Even this he does wrong, though, because who he ultimately picks isn't someone who can't get ahead, but someone who is happy with not getting ahead - a guy from Vermont (Henry Fonda as Tad Page) who rents fishing boats in the summer and thinks about summer in the winter.The prize is five hundred dollars and a course at Ameche's business school. Tad is interested in the five hundred dollars only - he wants to buy a new fire engine for his community. However, he is perfectly happy with his life as it is and is not interested in changing. So now Dawson and his fiancée (Lynn Bari as Claire) have to convince Fonda to go to the classes, prevent him from convincing the other students they don't really need these courses to be happy, and get him to be a success.A romantic triangle forms, rather predictable comical consequences ensue - Tad Page rubs off more on New York than New York rubs off on Tad Page, and I really never saw how Tad Page was either really magnificent or a dope.Darryl F. Zanuck, head of Fox studios, was big on message pictures and films with a historical context, and this is a rather rare example of a film done at his studio during his reign that is set in the present day that is not a noir. It's enjoyable stuff with Fonda doing his familiar likable every-man character and with Ameche as the debonair little weasel that you just can't bring yourself to truly dislike - much like a ferret in a tuxedo. A recommended rarity.

If The Magnificent Dope had been made over at Paramount it would have been a musical film for Bing Crosby. Of course Bing would never have played the kind of rube that Henry Fonda was in this film, but the premise is something he used in a whole lot of his films. Remember he had the idea of only having to work on holidays in Holiday Inn which came out the same year. A couple of musical numbers would have been nice for this film also.But this wasn't the kind of stuff Henry Fonda wanted to do though he does do a fine job in portraying a Mr. Deeds like bumpkin. Against his better judgment in 1940 he signed a studio contract with 20th Century Fox to get the part of Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. For the next few years whenever Fonda made a good film it was when Darryl Zanuck loaned him out for The Lady Eve at Paramount and The Male Animal at Warner Brothers. Don Ameche with assistance from Lynn Bari and Edward Everett Horton runs a Dale Carnegie like assertiveness training course which has been on the skids of late. Lynn Bari gets the idea to have a contest to find the laziest man around and turn him into an ambitious go getter. Ameche likes the idea and they come up with Fonda who also happens to be from Vermont as Longfellow Deeds was.Without saying the idea has results that Ameche and company never expected. The Magnificent Dope is lightweight stuff, but pleasant enough entertainment.In fact Don Ameche was also getting tired of the roles he was getting at Fox as well. Both Fonda and Ameche were taking second place to Zanuck's house favorite, Tyrone Power. Maybe The Magnificent Dope could have used a song or two though.