The Jessica Journals:

I am in shock and awe of Alfred Hitchcock. As those who read these pages know, I do not hold a high opinion of Mr. Hitchcock. He has turned out some of the lamest, most boring, and over-rated movies ever. I don’t loathe him so much that I refuse to admit a couple of his movies are very entertaining; however, up until this point, I have always had an opinion of every movie of his that I have watched. This week, that ended. Alfred Hitchcock managed to do something that I never thought was possible. He made a movie about which I have absolutely no opinion.

The one word that springs to mind when I think of The Trouble With Harry is “meh”, and, though I search with all vigor, no other words seem to follow. Ask my thoughts on any aspect of the movie and my answer will be that steady and unfailing three letter word.

Was it funny?

meh.

Was it boring?

meh.

Did Hitchcock manage to rise above his normal levels of over-rated lameness?

meh.

Did he suck ass?

meh.

Was the acting good?

meh.

Did Shirley MacLaine’s acting annoy you?

meh.

How ‘bout the little kid’s?

meh.

Were the dead man’s socks funny?

meh.

Even the fact that John Forsythe had a definite Humphrey Bogart look to him and played a character named Sam Marlowe only elicits a “meh”. However, since Humphrey Bogart is obliquely involved I’ll make it a capital “Meh”.

I have searched the very darkest crevasses of my soul’s depths in a quest to find some sort of opinion of this movie and yet I have been entirely unsuccessful. The only feeling I can even half-way conjure up is mild surprise that The Trouble With Harry even exists. I feel the way I would feel if I walked past a street corner every day for three years then on the 1096th day looked up and saw there was a telephone pole nearby that I had never noticed before.

By all rights something that provokes such little emotion ought not exist. But, then again, if the ability to incite emotion was the only basis for a creature’s existence then there would be a giant, razor-toothed, man-eating duck made entirely of cheese rampaging down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue even as I type. I’d laugh.

What good is art if it doesn’t inspire emotion? A person might just as well go stare at an accounting book if emotion isn’t a part of entertainment. And yet, though The Trouble With Harry claims to be a movie (and is, therefore, “art” on some level) it inspires absolutely nothing beyond a “meh” in me, which makes me suspect that it doesn’t actually exist.

I have gone so far at to create a chart to illustrate my point. On one end we have Spider-man 2 which stirs up my sorrowful depth. On the other side we have the above mentioned gene-splicing experiment involving a duck, a ferret, and a brick of sharp cheddar which makes me soar to formerly unachieved levels of rapture.

As you can see, The Trouble With Harry does not appear on that chart—not on the one end indicating I hated it, nor on the other end, indicating I loved it, nor even in the middle indicating I thought it was mediocre. It simply does not appear at all, a circumstance which forces me to ask one very important question: Does The Trouble With Harry even deserve a “meh”? You decide; I have no opinion.