Last week I attended the screening of North by Northwest, and while it wasn’t bad, I definitely left feeling underwhelmed. Part of this may be hindsight: since the movie industry has progressed so much since 1959 the things about NbNW that were brand spanking new are now standard fodder. Being 50 years old definitely put a damper on being able to enjoy it as well: the blatant sexism was so bad at times that it takes the viewer right out of the movie experience. In that same vein there were several pieces of dialogue that I personally thought were laughingly bad.

However, I will give credit where credit is due: the thriller portion of the movie was very good. The plot was unexpected, there were a suitable amount of surprises and mystery, and I never quite understood what was going on until the very end. There’s also the standard trope of the drab, regular person (the main character) that is thrown into extraordinary circumstances and must fight their way out, or die trying. In addition, the infamous innuendo at the end was fantastically executed: I almost didn’t catch it until a friend pointed it out.

Overall it wasn’t a terrible movie but I’m not sure if I would recommend it as a recreational viewing instead of part of a film class or something.