The day-dream of fantastic athletic prowess, of winning hits over the pavilion at Lord's in Test matches against Australia, of putts holed across the width of the last green to defeat the open champion, of smashes at the net at Wimbledon which win game, set and match, is normally a masculine preserve. Sporting Walter Mittys abound, but the female of the species is rare, yet it is a woman who, in Pat and Mike, does most of the things others can do only in their imaginations.
Thanks to Pat, Pat and Mike gets off to a cracking start, and by the time Mike arrives on the scene it is clear that little less than total collapse on the part of script and director can prevent the film from being a most gay and refreshing comedy. Good as is the idea behind Pat and Mike, it is the acting of Miss Katharine Hepburn, as Pat, and Mr. Spencer Tracy, as Mike, which gives it its real distinction. Miss Hepburn, immaculate in slacks and shorts, shows in her playing the same control and style that inform her performances at golf and lawn-tennis. The range of her technique is wider, the edge of her intelligence keener, than is general in film comedy acting and it is just that little extra which makes so triumphant a difference. Mr. Tracy can always be relied upon to do much that is beautifully right and nothing at all that is wrong, and here once again, in an idiom that suits the film he pulls off the double.
