Every month, our contributors will be putting together a list of ten films on certain topics. Each month will be different and will feature an alphabetical list our selections, commentary from each of us on our picks and an itemized list showing what we each selected.

Later this month, families all across the United States will celebrate a holiday that has come to define family tradition. In honor of this holiday, we here at Cinema Sight have decided to take a look at films about family. These aren’t going to be your typical glowing portraits of family life. Some are harrowing. Some are frightening. Some are sorrowful. Some are joyful. The one thing they have in common is that they all recognize families of various types and compositions.

Our four contributors did not unify around a single film this month, but two films managed to secure the votes of three members. Make Way for Tomorrow from Leo McCarey looks at family life when financial insecurity intervenes and separates a loving husband and wife forcing them to live apart with their unprepared children. One of the most overlooked masterpieces in cinema history, McCarey famously quipped that the Academy gave him the Oscar for Best Director for the wrong picture. He thought Make Way for Tomorrow should have been the immortalized picture, not The Awful Truth.

The other film is a look at a Welsh coal mining family who must work hard to afford the basic necessities while hoping that their youngest child can escape the meager existence they have provided. How Green Was My Valley is a John Ford masterwork that famously beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture in 1941. In spite of that, it is often considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Only one director was mentioned multiple times. Elia Kazan appears twice on the list with East of Eden and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. These films cross a wide swath of filmmaking genres including dramas, comedies, musicals, horror films, suspense, animation, and even documentaries. We even have a pair of foreign language entries included.

While our selections might not seem the most traditional, they each have special meaning to us that we will explain in our commentaries below.

Auntie Mame (1958)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. Morton DaCosta) Sometimes family is the person you need most to show you what you’re missing out on. Based on the popular novel and converted into a stage play, film and stage musical, Auntie Mame stars Rosalind Russell as the aunt to a young boy orphaned by his father’s sudden death. As she encourages him to “open a new window, open a new door,” the audience is transported into a world of high comedy, grand lessons, and the best aunt who ever lived. The film speaks a great deal about family as a support structure, but also as a challenge to antiquated ideas that force blossoming youngsters into traditional, moribund lives. It may not sell the ideal of the nuclear family, but it’s the kind of family anyone should want and need to be a part of.

Boyhood (2014)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. Richard Linklater) Richard Linklater’s real-time exploration of a Texas family filmed over the course of 12 years in the life of a growing boy, his sister and their divorced parents isn’t just a one-of-a-kind film, but a very savvy study of how we live life now. Just as in our own lives, there is a lot going on but much of it seems mundane in the telling of it until you get to the climactic moment when it all catches up with you. As the boy is leaving home to go off to college, the mother breaks down and says through her tears, “I thought there would be more.” That moment alone was enough to earn Patricia Arquette the Oscar.

Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

Commentary By Tripp Burton – (dir. Andrew Jarecki) Capturing the Friedmans is a harrowing, documentary peek into a family in turmoil. The 2003 film tracks the Friedman family throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s when computer teacher patriarch Arnold begins to be accused of molesting students and, along with his son Jesse, is put on trial. The most harrowing part of Capturing the Friedmans isn’t the tale, however, but the home videos of the family in real time. Through these videos, we see the Friedman family dealing with the tragedy in front of them, seemingly oblivious to the son with the video camera in the corner of the room, as they come to terms with their family secrets and truths and contemplate the future of the family bonds. We sit in on dinner table conversations that are terrifyingly uncomfortable in their rawness. Perhaps no other film puts us in the middle of the family dynamic quite as personally and abruptly as Capturing the Friedmans, and it remains one of the best films about families because of it.

Dan in Real Life (2007)

Commentary By Tripp Burton – (dir. Peter Hedges) Perhaps more than any other movie on my list, Dan in Real Life is the cinematic family I most want to have. It is a big, multi-faceted gaggle of loved ones who play ridiculous games together, challenge each other to crossword puzzle races and put on family talent shows that reward the absurd. Under the fun and games, though, is a tight-knit group of unconditional love and support. The greatest of struggles brings them together even tighter, and by the end, even betrayal and heartbreak can’t get in the way of their bonds. Dan in Real Life is a surprise of a movie, and one that I’m sad more people haven’t seen, and the bonds of the family is one of my favorite aspects of the film.

The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. George Stevens) A touching, emotional journey finds several disparate people cramped into a tiny space as they seek refuge from the Nazi corralling of Jews during World War II. These folks, hailing from three different families, are not particularly suited to each other. However, circumstance draws them together and through the raw nerves and heightening tensions, we see people come together as family, forging an unbreakable bond in the fires of fear and impending tragedy.

East of Eden (1955)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. Elia Kazan) Oscar-nominated James Dean had numerous minor roles under his belt when he broke out as a major star in Elia Kazan’s 1955 film of John Steinbeck’s modern Cain and Abel saga. The film omits the earlier Adam and Eve part of the novel and concentrates on the latter section in which Dean’s rebellious son causes no end of grief in the lives of his father (Raymond Massey), brother (Dick Davolas) and brother’s girl (Julie Harris) as he discovers what happened to his mother (Oscar winner Jo Van Fleet) and reveals the shameful secret to his brother after which there is a kind of healing for the broken characters.

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Commentary By Tripp Burton – (dir. Woody Allen) Woody Allen is no stranger to large ensembles, but Hannah and Her Sisters is the Woody film that is the most generous to each leg of that ensemble. The three sisters, their husbands, ex-husbands, parents, and colleagues all weave through each others’ lives. At the center is the even-headed Hannah, but as she watches a myriad of neurotics circle around her, we understand the bonds that this New York family have. They fight and betray, but they also love each other, and ultimately want what is best for each other (even if that happens to be your sister’s ex-husband). Hannah and Her Sisters is one of Woody Allen’s most complex films, and it deals with some of his deepest themes, but is also one of his funniest and most optimistic films in the end.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – Bookended by Thanksgiving dinners, this film follows a very extended family through divorces, affairs and the normal family ups and downs. It is one of Woody Allen’s best written and crafted films, and a sterling cast netted two Oscars as well. It is bittersweet, loving and altogether winning.

How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. John Ford) Ten Oscar nominations and five wins went to John Ford’s 1941 classic about the dissolution of a family as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy. He’s the one left behind as his five brothers and lone sister leave the family home in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Wales to seek lives away from the stifling coal country in which they were born. The acting by all concerned is first-rate, especially that of Roddy McDowall as the boy, Donald Crisp as his father, and Sara Allgood as his mother. Allgood speaks for mothers everywhere as she angrily dismisses McDowall’s attempts to show her on a map where her children have gone, saying “I know where they are… they’re in the house.”

Commentary By Tripp Burton – By focusing on the everyday struggles of a Welsh mining family, How Green Was My Valley may be one of the more intimate, realistic, large-family portraits ever to come out of Hollywood. The film is told through the eyes of the youngest child, Huw, but it takes time to give focus to many other members of the Morgan family. There are a lot of Morgans, but director John Ford makes sure we can always tell exactly where each one is and where there stories are going. Every hardship the Morgans face, and there are a lot, is dealt with head-on by the family, and they prove to be a model family of strength, love and support. How Green Was My Valley is a tad schmaltzy, but Ford is smart enough to make it intelligent schmaltz, and to give every moment a complete honesty that is sadly rare in this genre.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – It may be a little dated now, but this Oscar winner does show the warmth of a Welsh family as their coal mining way of life is disappearing. Seen through the eyes of the youngest child and narrated by his older self, it can be a bit overly sentimental, but the strong bonds in the family show through even as the life they were used to changes in ways they could not have imagined.

The Ice Storm (1997)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. Ang Lee) Not all families are picture-perfect models of American cultural life. Ang Lee’s masterpiece The Ice Storm looks at the lives of two neighboring families as they crumble from the various proclivities that effect them both. On a Thanksgiving evening as a major ice storm approaches, everything seems to be coming to a head and it’s here where Lee’s keen observations of human nature and humanity take root, exposing the raw nerves of trying to live the perfect life while you and those around you come apart.

In America (2002)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. Jim Sheridan) Jim Sheridan’s semi-biographical 2002 film of Irish immigrants adjusting to life on the mean streets of modern New York, co-written with his daughters, is far and away the best film about the harshness of immigrant life set in recent times. Oscar nominated for Best Screenplay, Actress (Samantha Morton as the young wife and mother) and Supporting Actor (Djimon Hounsou as a rage-filled neighbor dying of AIDS), this amazing film should have also been nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actor (Paddy Considine as the young father) and Supporting Actress (Sarah Bolger as the older daughter) as well.

The Joy Luck Club (1993)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. Wayne Wang) From one of the strongest years in modern cinema, Wayne Wang’s film based on the acclaimed novel by Amy Tan (who co-wrote the screenplay with Ronald Bass), explores the lives of four pairs of mothers and daughters who have gone through great trials and tribulations on the attempt to escape their lives in China and immigrate to San Francisco. We are brought into the delicate balance of tradition, set against a regularly scheduled game of mahjongl and modernity, exemplified by the differently complicated lives of the daughters. Brilliant performances by a stellar cast of Chinese and Chinese-American actresses, Joy Luck Club is simply one of the best films to come out of the 1990’s that not enough people found.

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. Lisa Cholodenko) There are many different kinds of families and Lisa Cholodenko’s drama about a lesbian couple and their two children draws not only a sharp contrast to the traditional narrative expressed in these types of films, but showcases how similar the struggles of gay couples are to those who have frequently castigated them. The film is bolstered by a superb cast including Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as the couple; Mark Ruffalo as the biological father; and Mia Waskikowska and Josh Hutcherson as the children.

Let the Right One In (2008)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. Tomas Alfredson) Tomas Alfredson’s filmic adaptation of a Swedish novel may sound like your traditional vampire flick, but at its heart it is a complex narrative about the tense bonds between a vampire child, the aging man who has cared for him and protected him for many years, and the young boy with whom the vampire forms a special connection that will necessary for his survival. This film is probably the most difficult to explain in terms of how it presents unique family dynamics, but while the vampire and his protector are seemingly little more than master and thrall, the connection is one that exemplifies the unique bond between parent-and-child or spouse-and-spouse. It is one that is both symbiotic and emotionally cohesive even if it is entirely non-traditional.

The Lion in Winter (1968)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. Anthony Harvey) The locale is the late 12th Century English court of Henry II, but the dialogue from James Goldman’s play is strictly 1960s Broadway. No matter, with a cast of acting giants like Peter O’Toole as Henry; Katharine Hepburn as his estranged queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine; Anthony Hopkins, John Castle and Nigel Terry as their rebellious sons Richard (the Lionhearted), Geoffrey and John; and Timothy Dalton as Philip II of Spain you know you’re in for a Christmas family gathering like none you’ve ever seen. Nominated for seven Oscars, it won three including Hepburn’s third of four.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – Perhaps the best bickering family drama out there. It helps that they are all royalty and played to the hilt by Katharine Hepburn (almost never better), Peter O’Toole (in a role that should have won him an Oscar), and the incredibly young Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton among others. Surprisingly not a success on Broadway, it was brought to roaring life by the cast, perfect direction, an Oscar-winning script, and fine location shooting. Talk of family betrayals, who should inherit, and who should be locked away in prison are just a few of the topics broached in this film, with most characters given a chance to shine. One of my favorite movies anyway, but also one that shows the love and hate that can simmer below the surface, though the love often wins out in the end.

The Little Mermaid (1989)

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – (dir. Ron Clements, John Musker) The first of what I would call the renaissance of the Disney animated films. It deals with the desire of a young mermaid to be human, if only for three days, but also includes the sacrifices one will make for one’s family, be it blood or crustacean. It is beautifully animated with a lush score and memorable songs, but without the dealings between Ariel and her father, it would not have been as memorable.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. Sidney Lumet) Families don’t come any more dysfunctional than Eugene O’Neill’s, thinly disguised here as the Tyrones. Written in the 1940s, but not allowed to be performed until after his death in 1953, the play has since become a staple with numerous celebrity casts performing it over the years. The 1962 film version won awards for all four stars at the Venice Film Festival that year – Katharine Hepburn as the drug-addicted mother, Ralph Richardson as the egomaniacal stage actor father, Jason Robards as the alcoholic older brother, and Dean Stockwell as the sensitive, consumptive writer, but only Hepburn received an Oscar nomination for her heartbreaking performance.

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Commentary By Tripp Burton – (dir. Orson Welles) Orson Welles’ follow-up to Citizen Kane was famously taken from his hands and reassembled by the studio. We may never get to see Welles’ complete vision, but what we can see is still a remarkable family saga. As the wealthy Ambersons are repeatedly challenged with death, revelations, and financial problems, Welles (from Booth Tarkington’s novel) lets the true nature of each family member come out. They aren’t the most loving family, but they are one of the most revealing families from the Golden Age of Hollywood. If only we could see what their complete story was like.

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. Leo McCarey) The heartbreaking realization that your family loves you, but doesn’t want to be burdened with you speaks to generations of moviegoers from those forced out of their homes by the Great Depression, like our loving couple in this film, to modern adults forced to look after their aging and increasingly infirm parents. Taking an honest and beautiful look at love, distance, and the struggle to find one’s place when separated by seemingly insurmountable distances, both physical and emotional, Make Way for Tomorrow is easily one of cinema history’s best pictures and is a haunting, yet wistfully hopeful film.

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – A box-office flop in its initial run, Leo McCarey’s 1937 film about an elderly couple at the mercy of their middle-aged children has enjoyed a well-deserved cult status at least since the 1970s. Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore are the old-timers who lose their home forcing them to separate with Bondi going to live with son Thomas Mitchell, daughter-in-law Fay Bainter, and granddaughter Barbra Reed; and Moore with daughter Elisabeth Risdon. Bondi, only 46 at the time, is a revelation as 70-year-old Lucy Cooper. The brief reunion of Bondi and Moore at the film’s conclusion is especially moving.

Commentary By Tripp Burton – Leo McCarey’s heartbreaking 1937 drama follows an elderly couple who can no longer afford to live on their own and must move in with their kids. The heartbreaker, though, is that neither kid has room for both parents, and so they are going to have to split up to separate sides of the country. As we watch the children negotiate their parents’ futures, and none of them want to be bothered with the burden of taking care of them, we begin to understand the politics of family. Is family a responsibility? When does that responsibility lapse? More importantly, who should make the sacrifices for that responsibility, and what do we owe our parents in their old age? All of this is touched on, but in an intelligent, unmanipulative way that washes over you and eventually breaks you down.

Mary Poppins (1964)

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – (dir. Robert Stevenson) One thinks of this as just a film about a magical nanny, her wards, chimney sweeps, and best friend, but the heart of the movie is about the mending of the relationship between the two young tykes and their father. It is only when that is done that Mary can move on to the next family that needs her attention. David Tomlinson is sweet and slightly heartbreaking as the stern, lost and eventually loving father. Julie Andrews is the star of the film, but the family provides the necessary drama and heart.

Ordinary People (1980)

Commentary By Tripp Burton – (dir. Robert Redford) If the truest test of a family’s love is how they deal with grief, than the greatest cinematic test may be the family at the center of Ordinary People. Picking up after the death of one son and the grief-driven attempted suicide of their other, Robert Redford’s Best Picture winner follows parents, Calvin and Beth (Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore), as they try to put the pieces of their lives back together and deal with life in a now-smaller household. As survivor Conrad (Timothy Hutton) and his mother continually battle each other, trying to make sense out of their own guilt, blame and stress, we watch a family slowly crumble apart. Family dynamics have never been this fraught yet engaging, and the central performances of Sutherland, Moore and Hutton create one of the most memorable, yet tragically wounded, film families.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – This picture absolutely resonated with me when it came out. A teenage boy is trying to deal with his brother’s death and hopes to reconnect with his parents. Timothy Hutton’s feelings of loneliness and estrangement are practically tangible. It builds to a bittersweet conclusion where at least some of the family can be reconciled. Hutton, Mary Tyler Moore and Judd Hirsch were never better on film, and Donald Sutherland shines in a low-key role as the father. Not a happy film, but still a strong one.

A Room with a View (1985)

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – (dir. James Ivory) The core of this film may be a romance, but it is the dealings with their respective loving families that gives this delightful film its heart. Helena Bonham Carter may be bothered by her restrictive cousin and chaperone and later embarrassed by her family, and Julian Sands may not totally understand his loving and emotional father, but there is a sense of love in all of their dealings with them. It is a sedate and delightful film. Florence, Italy has never looked lovelier either.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Commentary By Tripp Burton – (dir. Wes Anderson) The Royal Tenenbaums plays off of the conceit that the more talented a family may be, and the more a family is pushed to achieve the greatness they are destined for, the more dysfunctional they become. When patriarch Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) returns to his family, trying to reconnect with them by pretending to be dying, this family of geniuses becomes simultaneously more and less functional. They find bonds with each other that they had forgotten about, and we discover life creep into their sad corners of the Tenenbaum house, but those bonds also lead to private eyes, unearthed secrets, suicide attempts, car crashesk, and a dead dog. The Tenenbaums are a family where the more secrets they have the better off they think they are, but in the end they discover that only a Tenenbaum can help another Tenenbaum get through life.

Secrets & Lies (1996)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. Mike Leigh) The most interesting families on film are usually the ones that have the most to hide. Hortense (Marianna Jean-Baptiste) is seeking out her birth mother and discovers to her surprise that she comes from a rather dysfunctional white family even though she is black. She desires nothing more than to discover where she came from, but instead uncovers many emotions and recriminations simmering beneath her birth family’s surface. While the secrets begin to boil over, ultimately the loving connection between family members builds to a fitting end, one that leaves their lives open to improvement. Both Jean-Baptiste and her mother, played by Brenda Blethyn, are superb.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) What if your favorite uncle was not everything you thought and hoped he would be? This Hitchcock film brings that question to light in one of his best and most underrated films. Teresa Wright is lovely as the young woman learning that her uncle, Joseph Cotton, might be a killer. The rest of the family can’t see this, and the building tension between niece and uncle keeps growing, until she is certain in her convictions. Filmed on location in a small town in California, it showed that evil is not just for the big city. Hitchcock often referred to this as his favorite film.

The Sound of Music (1965)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. Robert Wise) Leaving her convent behind, a young woman takes a job as a governess to a large family on the edge of the Austrian Alps. The Von Trapps are one of film’s quintessential families. A widowed father (Christopher Plummer) has been trying to raise his seven children under strict discipline when Maria (Julie Andrews), fresh from the abbey, moves in and turns his life upside down. Instantly bonding with the children, Maria and Captain Von Trapp must navigate their challenging bond as the captain’s outside love interest inserts a wedge into what might have been a successful new relationship.

Terms of Endearment (1983)

Commentary By Wesley Lovell – (dir. James L. Brooks) An overprotective mother (Shirley MacLaine) at once both nurtures and smothers her daughter (Debra Winger) as the two try desperately to find the romantic relationship that will make them whole. Their connection is a jumble of emotions that suffers over the film’s length as the two try to strike out individually, but ultimately reconnect over tragedy. There has seldom been a more complex and naturalistic relationship between a mother and her daughter. MacLaine and Winger are both terrific as they stage one battle and reconciliation after another.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. Robert Mulligan) Gregory Peck’s profoundly moving Oscar-winning portrayal of Depression-era Southern lawyer Atticus Finch in Robert Mulligan’s 1962 film of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has been rightfully regarded ever since as the screen’s perfect father. Mary Badham and Phillip Alford are also pretty perfect as Scout and Jem, his children, as are Brock Peters as Tom Robinson, the falsely accused black man Peck defends; Robert Duvall (in his first credited screen role) as their mysterious neighbor Boo Radley; and John Megna as Dill Harris, Scout and Jem’s friend based on Lee’s childhood friend, Truman Capote.

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – Seen through the eyes of an adoring child towards her father, she watches him deal with racism, family, and doing the right thing. Gregory Peck was never better, though I don’t know if he should have won the Oscar over Peter O’Toole for Lawrence of Arabia, but he is at his least wooden and most nuanced in the role he will be most remembered for. Mary Badham delights as his daughter Scout. It is a well done film.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. Elia Kazan) Told from the perspective of a bright 12-year-old girl (Peggy Ann Garner) in the Brooklyn tenements of the early 1900s, this moving family drama deals with the loss of the father (James Dunn) to alcoholism and the struggles of his pregnant widow (Dorothy McGuire) to make ends meets. Bleak it may be, but it’s also life-affirming and extremely moving with one of the greatest child performances of all time by Oscar winner Garner, with superb support from McGuire, Dunn (also in an Oscar-winning role), Joan Blondell as McGuire’s much-married sister, Lloyd Nolan as the local cop, and James Gleason as a sympathetic bar owner.

A Wedding (1978)

Commentary By Tripp Burton – (dir. Robert Altman) In terms of pure size of the family, I don’t think any family in movie history can surpass Robert Altman’s A Wedding. The credits list 48 speaking members of the Corelli/Brenner families, who come together for the lavish, titular ceremony where everything goes wrong. Weddings can bring out the best and worst in families, and Altman’s film does both; these families feature drug addicts, lecherous affairs, nude portraits, illegitimate pregnancies, but they also get through the wedding with a layer of love, support, and pride in their loved ones. A Wedding may not be Altman’s best, or even funniest, film, but it is one of his most sprawling ensembles and chaotic creations, and a great portrait of a classic family event.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)

Commentary By Tripp Burton – (dir. Lasse Hallström) Although What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is probably best described as a coming of age tale, the strongest threads of the movie are about Gilbert Grape dealing with the responsibilities and restraints of his family life. Whether it is dealing with his mentally handicapped brother Arnie, his homebound mother, or his responsibility-laden sisters. Watching Gilbert and his sisters take care of their older and younger dependants, and balance the need for their own lives and adventures with the needs of their loved ones, opens up a powerful examination on what we do for our families and when our obligations to them outweigh our obligation to our own future. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape does this in a funny, touching, and immensely watchable way.

When Marnie Was There (2015)

Commentary By Peter J. Patrick – (dir. Hiromasa Yonebayashi) This warm-hearted Studio Ghibli animated masterpiece is about a melancholy young Japanese girl who is sent by her foster mother to spend the summer with old acquaintances in the hopes of snapping her out of her funk. There she befriends a beautiful Eurasian girl with long blonde hair who may be imaginary, may be a ghost, but who has her best interests at heart. Who is she and why does she care about young Anna? A mysterious elderly artist holds the key to the answer. The U.S. release version is perfectly voiced by the likes of Hailee Steinfeld, Kiernan Shipka, Geena davis, Kathy Bates, Vanesssa Williams and others.

You Can’t Take It With You (1938)

Commentary By Thomas La Tourrette – (dir. Frank Capra) Featuring a veritable who’s who of 1930’s acting royalty (Lionel Barrymore, Jean Arthur, Jimmy Stewart amongst many others) this film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play is about a family that has decided to follow their dreams rather than doing what convention dictates. A luminous Jean Arthur as the daughter who bucks the trend and actually works for a living sets the scene when she becomes engaged and has to introduce her family to the staid Kirby family. Hilarity and fireworks literally ensue, but all works out in the end. The cast works wonderfully together and a crisp script and direction keep the movie rolling along.