Alfred_Hitchcock rarely allowed his dry and barbed sense of humor to rise to the surface as fully as in The Trouble With Harry, one of his only real comedies, and a film that he often cited as a personal favorite. Like a Charles Addams or Gahan Wilson cartoon come to life, The Trouble With Harry finds its characters amusingly unconcerned with the fact that Harry is dead, and his remains -- repeatedly dug up, dragged about, and reburied -- are shown a casual disrespect that is both funny and jarring. Hitchcock had a fondness for eccentric comic-relief characters, and here he gave them a film to themselves; Edmund_Gwenn, Mildred_Dunnock, and Mildred_Natwick are all in fine form. While it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to accept John_Forsythe as a bohemian artist, Shirley MacLaine was an inspired choice, in her first screen role, as his love interest, displaying a sharp, pixie-ish charm that was a welcome alternative to the high-gloss glamour gals of the period (and Hitchcock's usual ice-queen heroines). The Trouble With Harry is not one of Hitchcock's best films, but the Master was clearly enjoying himself, and anyone who appreciated the eccentricity of Thelma_Ritter in Rear_Window or Leo_G._Carroll in North by Northwest will have a lot of fun with this movie. Mark Deming, Rovi

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