Unwatchable

why would you go by today's standards? Movies have changed a lot since those days. Yes the movie has plot holes but what movie's don't? Also they may have made him a French officer because it may have been harder than for a Englishman to go to the states. I am unsure about that issue though.

John wayne:If you say three you will never hear the man count ten.

Not unwatchable but I agree, it's very overrated. People always talk about Grant being in drag but even if you consider this hilarious it's only in the last ten minutes. A lot of the action is contrived and too ridiculous to be truly funny.

As to why Grant played a Frenchman, that's easy: the character he portrays, Henri Rochard, was a real man who wrote the story the film's based on (see the credits). He was actually a Belgian officer who married a female American officer and suffered through some of the bureaucratic problems depicted in the movie. He didn't have to dress up like a woman to enter the States, however. But Grant isn't the least convincing as a Frenchman. Since they changed so much else of the truth for the film, they could and should have made his character English.