As Ms. Spenser says, "I never met a man I didn't like until I saw Will Rogers in Life Begins at Forty." She has a low tolerance for homepsun cornball philosophy. Me, I love it.
Life stars Will Rogers as an old cantankerous publisher of a small-town newspaper. He match-makes a cute ex-con and a schoolmarm, and so forth, but I'm not going to get into the plot. I want to talk about the character actors. Early on, we meet Sterling Holloway, a classic chinless bug-eyed yokel. But he fades away, leaving the stage for one Slim Summerville.
He plays W. T. Meriwether, a lazy hillbilly who sleeps in Rogers' newspaper office and idly whittles on the furniture. A look at IMDB shows him acting in more than a hundered movies, and directing a slew of silents. I'll keep my eye out for this character actor.
Judging by Ms. Spenser's reaction, you need a pretty high tolerance for hokum to enjoy this film. I can't say there are many real laughs, but plenty of grinning.
Also, hawg callin' plays an important part in the plot.
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