The comic Western deserves its dismal reputation, but Destry Rides Again is the masterpiece of the form. Its trick is to play things half straight, with a B-Western plot propelled by Last Chance Saloon owner Brian Donlevy, who matches schemes with his dancehall girl, Marlene Dietrich (her Fräulein-goes-West style enhanced by three songs from The Blue Angel's Frederick Hollander). Bringing law to ludicrously wild Bottleneck is an unflappable James Stewart (in his first Western) as Thomas Jefferson Destry, Jr., a milk-drinking sheriff who makes his philosophical points with roundabout anecdotes that infuriate the earthy Dietrich. The obsessive recurrence of lost pants and misplaced guns, wrestling women, and gender role reversals deserve psychoanalysis elsewhere. But if Destry Rides Again can't charm confirmed haters of the Western, we'll admit defeat.