- Despite winning the award, Tess Harding (Katherine Hepburn) hardly deserves to be named "Woman of the Year." Sure, she's an impressively multi-lingual, internationally known newspaper columnist, but she's also incredibly self-absorbed and inattentive when it comes to her relationships with other people. Of course, Sam Craig (Spencer Tracy) isn't exactly "Man of the Year" himself. Although he seems well-meaning enough, Sam's antiquated concept of marriage neglects Tess' successful career, and he begins to resent his role in their struggling marriage. You'd think that two reporters would be perceptive enough to realize how incompatible they are with one another.
- While charming mismatches are admittedly the workhorse of the romantic comedy, Woman of the Year never convincingly bridges the gap. It's cute when one person likes baseball and the other prefers international politics. It's much less endearing when a refugee child suffers because his adopted parents' marriage is disintegrating. Instead of growing together over the course of the film, Tess and Sam only further alienate one another until the two magically reconcile at the film's admittedly humorous conclusion. It's a better ending than one in which Tess would have to become a more traditional wife, but the film gives us little reason to expect that the couple will ever succeed. Fortunately, Hepburn and Tracy are charismatic enough that Woman of the Year is quite watchable, if not completely enjoyable or believable.
- This was the first film pairing of Hepburn and Tracy.
