Stagy, tedious, wooden, boring, endless. And yet...
Here's a cast of wonderful MGM actors in their prime. Joan Crawford is not that far removed from the musicals of her youth. Her beauty hasn't hardened into the horrible Kabuki mask of later years. She's one of the worst things about this movie. She's utterly unfunny and totally charmless. She sinks every scene to the bottom of the sea, and thence downward to the center of the earth. Still, it's always interesting to watch her, to notice the lighting and other tricks that give her the star treatment in every shot.
The male leads are the incomparable William Powell (one year after "My Man Godfrey"), and Robert Montgomery (one year before "Night Must Fall").
The rest of the cast is filled out with wonderful character actors including Frank Morgan, Nigel Bruce, and Melville Cooper. Not to mention Jessie Ralph, a cinema immortal for her role as Mrs. Hermosillo Brunch in "The Bank Dick."
In 1937 American actors were severely afflicted with the phony English accent syndrome ("cahnt" for "can't"). Here, the cast is supposed to be mostly English, with only Crawford and Powell as visiting Americans. But Crawford and Powell both speak in that mid-Atlantic half- English accent. Meanwhile, half the "English" characters are played by Americans who barely attempt to sound English (Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Jessie Ralph). In these bewildering accents, much dialog is babbled, little of it worth hearing.
But under the wreckage you can discern the movie somebody was hoping to make: something like the infinitely better "Trouble In Paradise," Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece about two jewel thieves, their victim, and the resulting love triangle. Samson Raphaelson, the brilliant writer of "Trouble In Paradise," is one of the many listed writers on this movie. There are a few flashes of brilliant dialog here that sound like him. Meanwhile, Frank Morgan (later the Wizard of Oz) plays a character that's a prototype for Mr. Matuschek in the wonderful Lubitsch/Raphaelson "Shop Around The Corner."
But in this movie, 90% of the dialog is heavy as lead. There are many frenzied comings and goings, none of them funny. In no way is this movie a comedy -- if by comedy we mean what makes you laugh. Number of (intentional) laughs detected in this film: 0. Unintentional laughs: few. This isn't even one of those so bad it's good movies. It's just a stinker.
And yet... all those actors near the tops of their careers... a first-class MGM production from the golden age... and Mrs. Hermosillo Brunch! My advice: Tivo it and watch it at triple speed if you like, but do take a gander.
Here's a cast of wonderful MGM actors in their prime. Joan Crawford is not that far removed from the musicals of her youth. Her beauty hasn't hardened into the horrible Kabuki mask of later years. She's one of the worst things about this movie. She's utterly unfunny and totally charmless. She sinks every scene to the bottom of the sea, and thence downward to the center of the earth. Still, it's always interesting to watch her, to notice the lighting and other tricks that give her the star treatment in every shot.
The male leads are the incomparable William Powell (one year after "My Man Godfrey"), and Robert Montgomery (one year before "Night Must Fall").
The rest of the cast is filled out with wonderful character actors including Frank Morgan, Nigel Bruce, and Melville Cooper. Not to mention Jessie Ralph, a cinema immortal for her role as Mrs. Hermosillo Brunch in "The Bank Dick."
In 1937 American actors were severely afflicted with the phony English accent syndrome ("cahnt" for "can't"). Here, the cast is supposed to be mostly English, with only Crawford and Powell as visiting Americans. But Crawford and Powell both speak in that mid-Atlantic half- English accent. Meanwhile, half the "English" characters are played by Americans who barely attempt to sound English (Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Jessie Ralph). In these bewildering accents, much dialog is babbled, little of it worth hearing.
But under the wreckage you can discern the movie somebody was hoping to make: something like the infinitely better "Trouble In Paradise," Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece about two jewel thieves, their victim, and the resulting love triangle. Samson Raphaelson, the brilliant writer of "Trouble In Paradise," is one of the many listed writers on this movie. There are a few flashes of brilliant dialog here that sound like him. Meanwhile, Frank Morgan (later the Wizard of Oz) plays a character that's a prototype for Mr. Matuschek in the wonderful Lubitsch/Raphaelson "Shop Around The Corner."
But in this movie, 90% of the dialog is heavy as lead. There are many frenzied comings and goings, none of them funny. In no way is this movie a comedy -- if by comedy we mean what makes you laugh. Number of (intentional) laughs detected in this film: 0. Unintentional laughs: few. This isn't even one of those so bad it's good movies. It's just a stinker.
And yet... all those actors near the tops of their careers... a first-class MGM production from the golden age... and Mrs. Hermosillo Brunch! My advice: Tivo it and watch it at triple speed if you like, but do take a gander.