Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Pat and Mike

A female phys-ed instructor (Katharine Hepburn) and all around athlete sporadically enters a golf tournament which she seems surprisingly poised to win. Bribed by an unethical sports manager (Spencer Tracy) to lose, she refuses but loses anyway thanks to her flustered state due to the presence of her unnerving fiance (William Ching). Soon, she is signed by the manager and embarks on a whirlwind multisport national tour while quickly falling in love with him. "Pat and Mike" is another excellent entry from Tracy and Hepburn, which reunites them with director George Cukor and wedded writing team Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. Hepburn's spunk is quite infectious and plays very nicely to Tracy's hard nosed New York City type, especially in a riotous scene where she muscles some imposing thugs (one of whom is played by a young Charles Bronson) trying to collect a debt from her manager. "Pat and Mike" is a light but exceedingly entertaining picture that once more demonstrates the remarkable chemistry between its two stars and their longtime collaborators.