Critical Reception
The critic for The Hollywood Reporter was one of the few reviewers to look upon the film favorably, calling it "a Christmas sockful of joy, funny, sentimental, romantic frankly capricious." In the New York Times, A.H. Weiler noted, "Mr. Capra and his energetic troupe manage to get a fair share of laughs from Mr. Runyon's oddball guys and dolls, but their lampoon is dated and sometimes uneven and listless . . . Repetition and a world faced by grimmer problems seem to have been excessively tough competition for this plot."
Variety thought the plot "alternates uneasily between wit and sentiment" and added, "The picture seems too long, considering that there's never any doubt as to the outcome, and it's also too lethargic, but there are sporadic compensations of line and situation that reward the patience. Fortunately Capra has assembled some of Hollywood's outstanding character players for the chore . . . The best lines in the picture go to Peter Falk, who just about walks off with the film when he's on." In Films in Review, Elaine Rothschild stated "this unbelievable and unfunny comedy proves only that director Frank Capra has learned nothing and forgotten nothing in the 28 years that intervened between the two pictures. Pocketful of Miracles is not merely out of whole cloth, but out of date, and watching it is a painful experience."
Read more about this topic: Pocketful Of Miracles
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