— but this time around everyone they encounter seems to be in on the joke, and their misadventures play as fairly innocent screwball comedy.
And yet simultaneously, the MPAA's decision to give a lighthearted, funny, and innocent romantic comedy an R rating because two affluent and responsible adults smoke a joint together at a fancy party and have fun, is troubling.
They've run the gamut, from atmospheric terror tales such as Jack Clayton's 1961 "The Innocents" to comedies like 1984's blockbuster "Ghostbusters" and faux-documentaries like 1999's "The Blair Witch Project" and the"Paranormal Activity franchise, which began in 2007.
With folk music, broad physical comedy, innocent romance and severe tragedy, the play centers on the relationship between Maria and her husband, Noam, whom she meets on the eve of World War I.
Rachel is the female equivalent of those sleepwalkers who populate a lot of American comedy: innocents who run the gantlet of a faithless world, only to emerge more or less intact.
But the isolated are far from innocent in this sharp comedy.
The New York Times Herbert Mitgang described it as "one of the funniest radio shows of the early 1930s", adding that "the radio dialogue was so witty and outrageous, innocent form of original comedy – as well as serious drama".
Mr. Brantley called it "deliciously, deliriously innocent," pretty good for a comedy about an American in Paris juggling love affairs with three flight attendants.
Anyone who has been subject to such unreconstructive brain-fluff as the Disney sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter will be aware that the trope of the protective (and generally American) father driven to distraction at the thought of some horny, spotty suitor pawing the body of his innocent little girl is a comedy mainstay.
I note new riches every time I see this film (for example, the noble kestrel is found nesting high in an old ruin from pre-industrial days), as well as happily revisiting such familiar ones as the contrasted teachers, played by Colin Welland and Brian Glover, and the terrible comedy of the innocent boy accidentally beaten by the stupid, vindictive headmaster.
