Not having a good idea of what to watch off of my DVR, I decided that I'd put in another of the DVDs in my Claudette Colbert box set and watch a new-to-me movie, I Met Him in Paris.
Colbert plays Kay Denham, an American working girl who's got a fiancé in nice but bland Berk Sutter (Lee Bowman). Kay hasn't had much of an opportunity to see the world, so she's decided that before she gets married, she's going to take some of the money that she's saved up and see a little bit of the world, specifically by getting on one of those transatlantic liners that were still a thing in the 30s and go off to Paris. Not that Berk is happy, but it's also not as if he can stop her.
At any rate, Kay gets on the boat and winds up in Paris, because there's nothing particularly interesting happening during the voyage in this iteration of the story. However, she doesn't speak much French and doesn't seem to be enjoying herself very much. That is, until she's spotted in the hotel restaurant alone by Gene Anders (Robert Young, who was of course a staple at MGM's variations on the 1930s rom-com theme). Gene is staying with a friend, writer George Potter (Melvyn Douglas). Gene immediately starts wooing Kay, while George doesn't seem one bit happy with that.
George's unhappiness is in part down to the fact that he finds himself falling for Kay too, although it's going to take her a while to warm up to him for various reasons. The other reason is because George is being less than honest with Kay. In fact, at one point, George threatens Gene that he'll tell Kay that Gene is in fact married! As I was watching the movie, I thought Gene should just point out that George is being a jerk willing to make up stories about Gene in order to get Kay to stop thinking about Gene and instead think about George.
Kay has by this time gotten bored with Paris, and decides that she wants to see Switzerland, so all three dump whatever they're doing and head off to Switzerland and one of those alpine resorts in the middle of winter. This gives the three an opportunity to show some comedic flair with various winter sports, while having a location where they're more or less shut off from the world. Kay finds herself falling a bit out of love with the increasingly jealous Gene, or at least in love with George, who isn't such a bad guy after all. But neither of them is perfect, and Kay has a fiancé back in the States anyway.
If I had a problem with I Met Him in Paris, it's that the resolution of Kay's dilemma isn't handled very well. Beyond that, the movie is a competent movie that fits squarely within the genre of 90-minute romantic comedies the studios were churning out in the latter half of the 1930s: a mix of glamorous locations and sophistication, combined with stars that the studios were trying to keep in the public eye. Apart from an ending I thought wasn't very strong, that's not anything notably wrong with the movie. It just doesn't rise above the rest of the genre, and heaven knows there were quite a few movies in the genre.
I Met Him in Paris is the sort of movie that it would be nice to see show up on TCM on some morning or afternoon as part of a birthday salute or some other theme. But it was made at Paramount and one of those movies that Universal got the rights to, which is why it never seems to show up anywhere. Definitely worth one watch, and nice to have in a box set, but not spectacular.
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