In 5TH AVENUE GIRL, director Gregory La Cava seems to have anticipated Howard Hawks's HIS GIRL Friday by giving us a loose remake of MY MAN GODFREY with a key sex role reversal. A down-on-her-luck woman (Ginger Rogers) is thrust into the bosom of a bizarre wealthy family and goes a long way towards straightening them out. 5TH AVENUE GIRL presents a slightly more serious treatment, its family less eccentric and rather more mean than that of GODFREY, and the movie suffers for the changes. It was the second of three straight films that La Cava made with Ginger Rogers, and by my lights is easily the least of the three.
On the plus side, the real star of the show is the fine character actor Walter Connolly, getting a rare opportunity to front a major film near the end of his life. As the put-upon manufacturer emotionally deserted by his ungrateful family he successfully evokes the audience's sympathy and shares a pleasant chemistry with Rogers, who is in full- scale deadpan mode (to an excessive degree in my opinion). The rest of the cast is adequate with the exception of Tim Holt, a dead weight in pretty much everything in which I've seen him with the notable exception of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRES. A major problem for 5TH AVENUE GIRL is the complete lack of development of its love interest subplot. Indeed, with the exception of Connolly's industrialist, pretty much everything in 5TH AVENUE GIRL remains undeveloped, including the character of the 5th Avenue Girl herself, which remains vague and sketchy throughout (this young lady is remarkably nonchalant about being down to her last $5. Why?). Indeed, we get far more details about the communist chauffeur and the idiot rich girl than we ever get about Rogers' 'Miss Grey'.
The whole film leaves me with a shrug of the shoulders. It's overtly sociological but never goes beyond 'the rich are people, too'. It's a comedy but is never really very funny. It's not exactly bad, but not really good, either.
I guess I'm a lotta help, aren't I?
On the plus side, the real star of the show is the fine character actor Walter Connolly, getting a rare opportunity to front a major film near the end of his life. As the put-upon manufacturer emotionally deserted by his ungrateful family he successfully evokes the audience's sympathy and shares a pleasant chemistry with Rogers, who is in full- scale deadpan mode (to an excessive degree in my opinion). The rest of the cast is adequate with the exception of Tim Holt, a dead weight in pretty much everything in which I've seen him with the notable exception of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRES. A major problem for 5TH AVENUE GIRL is the complete lack of development of its love interest subplot. Indeed, with the exception of Connolly's industrialist, pretty much everything in 5TH AVENUE GIRL remains undeveloped, including the character of the 5th Avenue Girl herself, which remains vague and sketchy throughout (this young lady is remarkably nonchalant about being down to her last $5. Why?). Indeed, we get far more details about the communist chauffeur and the idiot rich girl than we ever get about Rogers' 'Miss Grey'.
The whole film leaves me with a shrug of the shoulders. It's overtly sociological but never goes beyond 'the rich are people, too'. It's a comedy but is never really very funny. It's not exactly bad, but not really good, either.
I guess I'm a lotta help, aren't I?