[A Hole in the Head] is bound to disappoint some of Frank Capra's admirers, but they can console themselves, between laughs, by reflecting that if Capra isn't making the kind of pictures he once did, they aren't seeing them as they once did. Much of his earlier work relied on a stereotype of the good little people resisting the bad big people; it belonged to the 'thirties and would seem out of place today (He Who Must Die notwithstanding). The goodness, however, remains, and accounts for some sticky passages, most of them centering on Eddie Hodges, a nice youngster but too patently an emblem of vulnerable innocence. He doesn't cry much, but you know he could, and shouldn't have to.

Missing, too, is the kind of ready-made conflict that many of Capra's earlier pictures had in common. (pp. 50-1)

[Unfortunately], the film, or rather its plot, has no...