Review of 'Sullivan's Travels' (1941)

Sullivan's Travels opens with a fight scene atop a moving train. I liked that; grand, audacious, exciting, even by today's standards. I believe the movie maintained this standard of production and ambition throughout. It seemed like it would have been quite a blockbuster in its day, which made it very easy to watch. Road movies, too, are generally a pleasure to watch--and Sullivan’s Travels is as much an adventure films as it is comedy--because they double that effect of ‘escapism’, of the viewer being able to lose themselves in the narrative for the duration of the picture. I’m not crazy about Sullivan’s Travels but it would be a hopeless man who couldn’t enjoy it.