Film

You Can't Take It with You

Name: You Can't Take It with You
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Released: 1938
Cast: Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer

Frank Capra's Depression-era comedy about the Sycamores, a household of gleeful oddballs—ballet dropouts, firework makers, a printing press in the basement—who upend the stiff, wealthy family their daughter wants to marry into. It's broad, sentimental, and unabashedly preachy about money versus joy, but Jean Arthur and James Stewart give it real warmth. Comfort viewing for anyone who wants a message with their laughs.

TMDb rating

7.5

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Same Depression-era conviction that dignity and joy outrank money or machinery—just told through pantomime and slapstick instead of dinner-table farce.

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Bringing Up Baby1938

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Grey Gardens1976

The Sycamores made flesh: a real family that opted out of money and convention, but here the film refuses to soften what that choice actually costs.

A real mother and daughter, once high society, now living in gleeful ruin entirely on their own terms—eccentricity with no script and no guaranteed happy ending.

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The same setup—an outsider family infiltrating a wealthy household through love—but plays the gap between classes for dread instead of delight.

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