# It's a Wonderful Life - Do you like it or not?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** movies
**Created:** [December 17, 2009, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638 "2009-12-17T14:56:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 19
### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2025, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/361 "2025-12-24T18:04:06Z")
Watching the colorized version now.
Prime has the original b&w and colorized.
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### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2025, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/362 "2025-12-24T21:35:14Z")
I enjoyed rewatching. The middle section when Bailey is despondent and suicidal is very difficult to watch.
I relate more with his despair and sense of failure.
Btw, Did Potter get away with keeping the banks money? That would be considered theft today. He knew who that money belonged too.
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/363 "2025-12-24T21:41:56Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> Btw, Did Potter get away with keeping the banks money? That would be considered theft today. He knew who that money belonged too.
The lost ending should answer that question for you.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw89o0afb2A)
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### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2025, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/364 "2025-12-24T21:49:33Z")
🤣 Serves him right.
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2025, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/365 "2025-12-24T22:24:42Z")
Now it’s hard to imagine anyone besides Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter, but Claude Rains (who’d already worked with Jimmy Stewart a Frank Capra on _Mr. Smith Goes to Washington_) and Vincent Price were considered. Price especially would have taken the character in a different direction, which can be seen in _Champagne for Caesar_ with Ronald Coleman.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/366 "2025-12-25T04:03:55Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> Btw, Did Potter get away with keeping the banks money?
He got the money, sure. But it doesnt really matter. He died soon after a bitter old man, who no one loved.
And having the mob trun violent ruins the film.
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### Author:  [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/367 "2025-12-25T04:15:30Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> He died soon after a bitter old man, who no one loved.
How do you know the sequel wasn’t going to give him a redemption arc?
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### Author:  [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/368 "2025-12-25T04:19:39Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> Btw, Did Potter get away with keeping the banks money? That would be considered theft today.
Honestly, I’m not sure if it would. It might only be a tort. Something like conversion, maybe.
For example, does failing to return money given over by mistake, and without the mistake being induced by the recipient, count as a _taking_? Much less a wrongful/trespassory taking?
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/369 "2025-12-25T04:20:04Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#):
>
> How do you know the sequel wasn’t going to give him a redemption arc?
The film didnt really do that well, it lost a little bit and altho the critics mostly liked it, it wasnt well received at the time. There was never any plans for a sequel.
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### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/370 "2025-12-25T04:53:36Z")
A Christmas Story 1983 Peter Billingsley, Darren McGavin, Melinda Dillon
And the sequel
A Christmas Story Christmas 2022 Peter Billingsley, Erinn Hayes, several of the child actors came back for the sequel
The original is a Christmas classic. I look forward to it every Christmas Eve.
The sequel is ok. I don’t feel the same sweetness and charm as the original. They replaced Ralphie’s mom. Killed off The Old Man. (The two actors had died.)
There was a lot of drinking. Flick owns a bar. Grandma gets sloshed.
The ending is sentimental and satisfying. There are some good moments, but the movie is not consistent.
I wanted to see Ralph’s adult life and family. My curiosity is fulfilled.
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/371 "2025-12-25T05:08:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> And having the mob trun violent ruins the film.
It was a joke. A sketch from SNL. You know it wasn’t really the lost ending, right?
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### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/372 "2025-12-25T05:11:13Z")
Well, the Christmas Story comment was meant for the movie thread.
I guess it can live here.
The browser tabs are confusing me lately.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/373 "2025-12-25T15:33:05Z")
What I want to know is: Why does the soundtrack for evil always have to be jazz? In the _Buffy_ episode “Once More, With Feeling” the demon who attacks them does a jazz song and dance number. What is supposedly so demonic about jazz?
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/374 "2025-12-25T16:41:17Z")
I’ll have to pay better attention to the background music. Evil Nazis always = Wagner’s _Funeral of Siegfried_. Evil Satanists = something styled on Carl Orff’s _O Fortuna_.
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### Author:  [@themapleleaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/themapleleaf)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/375 "2025-12-25T18:02:16Z")
I have mixed feelings about the movie.
I like the production value, how an old-fashioned small town is depicted, and so on. And of course how everything works out for George Bailey and his family in the end and how the community rallies around them and pitches in to replace the stolen money.
On the other hand, I’m not completely enthralled about the movie’s message. Yes, it’s nice that George impacted so many people’s lives positively and that he has a loving family, but seriously, I don’t think it’s fair that the universe assigned so much responsiblilty for other people’s lives and welfare to this one man. George was physically punished for a mistake he didn’t make, lost his hearing in one ear, didn’t go to college or see the world, and it’s only now when he’s pushing middle age that it’s revealed that it’s all for a “wonderful life.” I think it would have been more fair to distribute that burden over more people and to have given George the chance to experience more of his youth as he wanted to.
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/376 "2025-12-25T18:29:43Z")
I view the film as “this ONE person’s life we are viewing, and its affect on others”. It’s a reduction to movie length. _Everybody’s_ live affect dozens of others. Just God never cared to show anyone until Clarence had the idea.
Like, Old Man Potter _really_ needed this treatment, or to be visited by the ghost of Peter Bailey and the three ghosts of Christmas. Because if anybody affected lots of lives, way more than George, (for the worse!) it would be Potter.
But God just lets Potter end up in hell on his own. I suspect he’ll be supremely surprised. George has a chance, so he gets the treatment.
And for all we know, this happens a lot. Of course, no one but the one person affected would know. This is but one person’s story. I bet a lot of people _would_ have left the world a better place if they’d never been born. That doesn’t help them with their existential crisis, though, so God would say nix on that.
Like my gripe about _Groundhog Day._ No matter how bad Phil may be, I maintain both Ned and Larry are equally as annoying, in different ways, and could stand a few millennia in repetition. I could make a case for Rita “I always drink to world peace.” too.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/377 "2025-12-25T18:32:45Z")
My older half-brother practically is a living George Bailey. He was born out of wedlock back when that was still a stigma to a neurotic irresponsible mother. He was raised in largely loveless circumstances and more or less kicked out to live or die on his own in his mid-teens, after first having lost out on several opportunities for a better life that were sabotaged by our mother. After my father’s death and our mother’s collapse into mental illness, my brother spent years more or less keeping me and my sisters from homelessness and out of foster care. He made the unfortunate mistake of marrying a woman of the same personality type as our mother, leading to a failed marriage and years of forced separation from his children. Through it all he more or less soldiered on and managed to keep things together despite seldom ever seeing his own hopes and dreams fulfilled.
The moral of the story is, God sometimes drafts people. When Jonah was told to go and scold the people of Nineveh for their sins, Jonah got on a boat going the other way; but God didn’t take no for an answer. C.S. Lewis famously wrote that having started out as a confirmed atheist, he converted to Christianity virtually against his will.
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/378 "2025-12-25T18:37:03Z")
And another thing to contmplate: George only sees the few things he affected that would have been worse. Maybe the kid with “the diphtheria”, instead of dying like was God’s original plan, grew up to be Ted Bundy. Best not tell him that.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/379 "2025-12-25T18:44:52Z")
I think it’s sort of like what Erū Ilúvatar told the rebellious spirit Melkor:
> And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2025, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-a-wonderful-life-do-you-like-it-or-not/521638/380 "2025-12-25T21:06:10Z")
> [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#):
>
> It was a joke. A sketch from SNL. You know it wasn’t really the lost ending, right?
Yes, I know, but people talk as if that is the way it should have ended. Which is wrong, IMHO.
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