I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE: cross-dressing comedy is a drag

I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE is a one joke movie which would easily outstay its welcome were it not for the heroic efforts of Cary Grant.He keeps us interested long after the constant bickering between the two main characters has ceased to be amusing.

He plays Henri Rochard, a French Army Captain on a mission in post-war occupied Germany. Quite why director Howard Hawks chose to cast the urbanely English Grant as a Frenchman is beyond me but Grant makes not the slightest concession to the part, choosing instead to play Rochard as Cary Grant in a fetching French Army uniform.
His companion on this mission is US Army Lieutenant Catherine Gates, played by Ann Sheridan. The two have an uneasy history, having been paired up on a previous mission where they took a serious dislike to one another. Gates is determined to prevent a repeat of whatever it was that happened the last time out (it's only ever vaguely alluded to) and without even trying unintentionally engineers a series of incidents which embarrass and humiliate Rochard. Of course Rochard, being Cary Grant, takes it all in his stride, and it's not long before hate turns to love.
But the humiliation doesn't stop there. The only way that Gates can ship her new husband Stateside is to have him classified as a war bride since, for the purposes of this movie anyway, US Army regulations have made no allowances for the possibility of American female service personnel marrying foreigners.
As I mentioned earlier all of this embarrassment and confusion in the service of comedy would have become stale before the story's midway point were it not for Grant's professionalism and determination to make the best of the material he's been given. 
Watching him work his kepi off to wring the last drop of humour from the unimaginative script made me think back to his earlier work with Hawks on the 30s screwball classics "Bringing Up Baby" and "His Girl Friday." Sitting in a wet field on location in Germany did Grant also, I wonder, think back to those smash-hit successes where the laughs came so effortlessly , and ask himself what had become of the great director's comedic instincts in the intervening decade.
Really only worth watching if you're determined to see every film Grant ever made, I give this just 2 out of 5 for entertainment value.