Review of Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) by Noah B — 16 Oct 2010

Young Mr. Lincoln is a nice film, especially for die-hard fans of John Ford and Henry Fonda. The problem is that it was a little hard for me to take it completely seriously at times.

Henry Fonda gives a very pleasant performance as the titular character. He truly does take the character of Abraham Lincoln and make it his own. That's not always the best choice, but it's hard to dislike Fonda in any role.

The film is based on a trial in which the young Lincoln defends a man charged with murder. And this is where I have a lot of problems with this movie. This trial was *very* hard to take seriously. Abe Lincoln makes continuous jokes throughout that section of the movie and the courtroom is in constant chaos. Now, if courtrooms really were so disorganized back then, that's fine. But a balance needs to take place between the disorganization of the trial and the comedy that takes place. We can't have both flooding the screen at the same time. I took the trial in My Cousin Vinny far more seriously than the one in this film (in fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that My Cousin Vinny is the superior film). I like John Ford as a director, but he needed to keep the tensions high in order for the whole section of the film to work and he didn't. Because of this, I almost disliked the picture altogether.

What made me really like this movie, however, was the very intelligent--and occasionally witty--dialogue written by Lamar Trotti (who also wrote The Ox-Bow Incident and Alexander's Ragtime Band, both of which were nominated for Best Picture). Even if the film is a little structurally unsound during the trial scenes, it's difficult to completely bash the way he's able to weave dialogue in such clever ways.

And it truly is hard to dislike Henry Fonda who plays the young Lincoln very well. There's a lot wrong with this movie, but there's enough right about it to make it worth watching at least once.

6/10.