There's a difference between being good and being intelligently good. The former don't care much if their Pearls are being served to swine, the latter care very much about that and try to avoid it. The former do not fight capitalism, the latter do, because there is no other way to be good.There is no need for Charity in a system of absolute material equality and the intelligently good strive for that system. You see, those who Think that they are entitled to a thousand times more than other people are not good people, they are evil people, got it? If you are truly good, you will fight the system that make evil people the Winners, won't you? Got it? Good.Sam in this Movie don't Think much at all. He's a seller in a department store and at the same time he is supposed to be good. That is idiotic, period.The 3 votes out of 10 are for the performers of this Movie. They did not Think much either otherwise they would not be in this Movie but they have made other great stuff and therefore you will have to forgive them.

IN WHAT MUST be regraded as an in-betweener (that being a story that is half way between being a farce and a sort of serious story), we see Gary Cooper in this curious comedy from Leo McCarey. We can't say that it doesn't have a great deal to offer; yet it never really realizes its full potential.BEING A PRODUCT OF the great Director McCarey, it has a great lineage from which it inherited many of the traits that had been become common ingredients of a feature comedy by that time. "That time", in this case, would be the late 1940's.MANY OF THOSE very traits were developed during those "golden" years of the silent movie era; being the mid to late 1920's. Two of the mainstays of technique were developed in the Hal Roach Studios. These were the slowing down of the comic action to allow for the building of a gag to a climax and effect; instead of rapid fire barrages of punches, kicks, custard pies and pratfalls.THE SECOND PRINCIPAL, which is a sort of methodical outgrowth of this deliberate style, has been named, "Reciprocal Destruction". This sort of extended gag witnesses the back and forth, ever escalating loosing of mayhem and malicious mischief on the property of others; with each side, all the while, never doing anything to prevent the other side from destroying ones own property. Got It? THE MAIN EXPONENT of such comic principles are those silent film shorts starring Laurel & Hardy. Mr. Leo McCarey is said to have been the main architect of these methods.IN THE FILM of which we are speaking, GOOD SAM, we have Mr. McCarey attempting to recapture some of the zaniness from by gone days by using generous portions of these now "old" reliables. Perhaps Leo was seen as having hit the zenith of his career in the Bing Crosby vehicles, GOING MY WAY and THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S.THE RESULTNIG MOVIE comes out with what we must call mixed results in the final product. McCarey places a very contemporary, though highly idealized American family (Gary Cooper, Anne Sheridan, etc.) into a sort of latter day Laurel & Hardy comedy.AT THE VERY heart of the story is a spoof of what would happen if someone, e.g., the head of a typical, church going, God fearing, Judeo-Chrisyian household takes the Golden Rule to an extreme. It is in this that, we believe, is the crux of the problem.AND, JUST AS a word of caution, please do not confuse this picture with the Jack Lemmon starring comedy vehicle, GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM (); which we feel does a much better job of hitting the old bull's eye! WE HAVE TO believe that, while the feature is somewhat enjoyable, it is doomed to failure from the start. After all, how can you make the loving and good treatment of your neighbors into a fault and expect anything else?

This film was a box office flop when it debuted in 1948 and part of the reason was that the chemistry between Ann Sheridan and Gary Cooper was just not there.This picture was the typical holiday feel good movie in the attempt of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," (1936) or "Miracle on 34th Street." (1947). The theme of the film is the basic good qualities of people and how you have to take a chance on them. Of course, the Gary Cooper character goes overboard as the do-good person; he sacrifices almost everything for good quality people at the expense of his own family.Ann Sheridan is impressive here going between her laughter at her do-good husband and anger when things don't go their way. The end of the film reminded me somewhat of the classic- "It's A Wonderful Life," (1946) where everyone rallies around our protagonist at a time when things couldn't appear to be bleaker. This film is basically the fulfillment of the American dream by doing good to your neighbor. It fails to reach its height because after a while you get tired of Cooper's constant good deeds and his drunken scene near the end gives us a necessary break from all this and shows the human frailty.

Leo McCarey's Good Sam, the story of a suburban good guy who can't say no to his friends and neighbors, should have been a masterpiece. It has many of the same ingredients as It's a Wonderful Life, and was directed and co-written by a man who was at his best Frank Capra's equal. McCarey directed the best Marx Brothers picture, Duck Soup, plus the splendid Ruggles Of Red Gap, the heartbreaking Make Way For Tomorrow, the enormously popular (if overlong) Going My Way, and its sequel, The Bells Of St. Mary's. He was even in a partnership with Capra, to produce films independently, but lost his touch after the war. Good Sam shows McCarey's brilliance with actors, all of whom (Gary Cooper, Ann Sheridan, Ray Collins, William Frawley) are excellent, but the script is convoluted and the story, an inspired idea, is, as told, hard to follow. It's worth watching, for McCarey's directorial "touches", which are wonderful, but the film is plodding and episodic, and seems to go on forever.