Disappointment for a huge fan!

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Some fun big names in this one... Charles Coburn (Jonathan) was awesome in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes".... Anne is played by Irene Dunn, who had made a whole bunch of films with Cary Grant. Lots of talking right at the beginning, and we hear how Mayor Anne Crandall has always been the straight arrow, putting others' needs before her own. This story has quite a bit in common with "Key to the City" from 1950. Small town mayor goes traveling to the big city, makes unwanted headlines, the troubles begin... although "Key" was MGM, "Together Again" was Columbia Pictures.. AND it came first. Although, honestly, "Key" was much more zany and fun. "Together" is much more sedate, calm, and collected. Boyer and Dunn are both stealing every scene, and we don't feel the chemistry we see in "Key to the City". Directed by Charles Vidor, who would also direct "Gilda" a couple years later . "Together Again" is pretty good. If you haven't seen "Key to the City", try to see that one too!

A comedy that seems out of place during World War II, this deals with a small town mayor (Irene Dunne) going to New York to interview a sculptor (Charles Boyer) about erecting a statue to her late husband to replace another one that for some reason was decapitated. Scandal finds her instead when he takes her to a notorious strip club that gets raided. He follows her back which gives her political rival (Charles Dingle) some ammunition to boot her out of office.Dunne and Boyer's third pairing is their only comedy and not a great one. It's sweet and pleasant, pleasantly acted, but lacking in energy. The delightful Charles Coburn once again steals every moment he is on screen as her old rascal of a father-in-law, anxious to see her re-married, presumably so his granddaughter by his son's first wife will stop pestering him. Coburn gets the kind of material that made him so amusing in the Jean Arthur films "The Devil and Miss Jones", "The More the Merrier" and "The Impatient Years".The stars do share chemistry, but when the story begins to get a bit serious, the interest comes to a grinding halt.Dunne is still able to perform a pratfall or two, looks lovely in a scene where she strips down to her negligee, and sings "I Get Ideas" in French charmingly. But when all is said and done, this is simply another variation of "Theodora Goes Wild" without the small-town parody present and as a result not nearly as funny.The love-starved stepdaughter briefly bogs the plot down with juvenile foolishness. When you've got professionals like Dunne, Boyer and Coburn, you really don't need anything else.

I was a bigger fan of "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" before I saw this little gem. "Bachelor's" Oscar should've been for Best Adapted Screenplay, not Best Original. Shows what a short memory Hollywood had even back then, since only 4 years separated the two. Item: Irene Dunne plays a single small town mayor (very well) while Myrna Loy in "Bachelor" plays a single judge. Item: Charles Boyer plays an astonishingly well dressed artist (sculptor) while Cary Grant also plays an astonishingly well dressed artist (painter). Item: both involve faux romances between the artist and a precocious willful girl much too young for him--Dunne's daughter in "Together", Loy's sister in "Bachelor." Both have meddlesome older relatives who push the reluctant lovers together--Chas. Coburn here, Ray Collins there. Dunne and Boyer don't have the chemistry here that they had in "Love Affair" (a huge hit 5 years before and the very circumstantial reason for the title, which has no relation ay-tall with the story) but they get along believably. Dunne gets put through some fairly humorous paces that play off well against her upright public image. It's almost as much a Hollywood satire on small town life (like its DVD-mate "Theodora Goes Wild" also with Dunne) as a romance, with less snickering at the narrow-minded rural bumpkins than most (including "Theodora").

The DVD of this movie that I received from Netflix paired it with another Irene Dunne comedy vehicle, the 1936 release "Theodora Goes Wild," and I can see why. "Together Again" (a generic title, by the way, and one that doesn't even really make much sense), borrows many plot points from that earlier film and rearranges them just enough to prevent this film from being a straight remake.Dunne plays the upstanding mayor of a provincial town who resists falling for an artist from the city (Charles Boyer) when she hires him to create a new statue for the town square. The statue happens to be of her late husband, the town's previous mayor, whose legacy Dunne has spent the years since his death trying to live up to. She becomes involved in a minor scandal while staying in the city, and tries to keep it from the town once she returns. But Boyer playfully uses it to blackmail her into accepting his advances. An additional storyline involving Dunne's daughter and her boyfriend adds some amusing complications to the situation.This film is a little bit of nothing, but it's cute and entertaining. It doesn't make any sense; plot developments spring out of thin air, and characters turn on a dime. But Dunne and Boyer make a good pair, and it's easy to see why they collaborated frequently. They have a lot of chemistry, and I've never liked Boyer better than here where he gets to show his comedic charming side. Terrific character actor Charles Coburn plays Dunne's father-in-law, whose purpose in life is to get Dunne married again. Some of the film's funniest moments come from hearing the things he says about his own granddaughter, a neurotic teenager who drives him crazy.There's a clever little weather motif running through the film that I liked very much and that ties the otherwise scattershot screenplay together rather nicely.Grade: B