This is a pretty awful film. Is it a tediously unfunny comedy? Is it a romance with as much feeling and emotion as you'd find in instructions on how to program your tv's remote control? Is it the a gangster film written by children from a jungle cut off from civilisation who had never seen a motion picture in their lives? Yes, amazingly it's all of these.
The blame for this has to lie with esteemed director Raoul Walsh. To say this is not his best work is an understatement! It's a shame to see the once mighty Fox Fox films in its death-throes churning out mindless and boring trash like this. It has tried to make something populist, it has tried to make something cheerful and upbeat - it was 1932 after all but it tries too hard. The result is trite, comedy by committee type jokes peppered onto a fake limp lettuce of a story. Seemingly whichever bank was running Fox that week found out what types of movies are making money and then tried to make a picture with bits of every popular genre all mixed together - we are spared however any vampires....although some of the cast do have a sense of the undead about them.
Thrown into the nonsensical story we've got Joan Bennett doing an impression of Jean Harlow which she does so well she's even worse than the real one - yes, she's that bad. (OK, Harlow did eventually become a decent actress but she was the most overrated actress of the early thirties). Spencer Tracy doesn't seem to know what sort of character he's meant to be playing in such a schizophrenic story so doesn't really try to imbue any character into his part. The dog however performs admirably.
Watching this, and assuming it must have some cultural context, it's interesting to see how lightly marriage seems to have been treated in 1932. People seem to get married at the drop of a hat. Security seemed to have taken precedence over love - or maybe the definition of love had to be more practical back in those difficult times? Also considering this was made during prohibition, everyone seems to be getting drunk all the time but maybe that's how they copped with such a pathetic script?
The blame for this has to lie with esteemed director Raoul Walsh. To say this is not his best work is an understatement! It's a shame to see the once mighty Fox Fox films in its death-throes churning out mindless and boring trash like this. It has tried to make something populist, it has tried to make something cheerful and upbeat - it was 1932 after all but it tries too hard. The result is trite, comedy by committee type jokes peppered onto a fake limp lettuce of a story. Seemingly whichever bank was running Fox that week found out what types of movies are making money and then tried to make a picture with bits of every popular genre all mixed together - we are spared however any vampires....although some of the cast do have a sense of the undead about them.
Thrown into the nonsensical story we've got Joan Bennett doing an impression of Jean Harlow which she does so well she's even worse than the real one - yes, she's that bad. (OK, Harlow did eventually become a decent actress but she was the most overrated actress of the early thirties). Spencer Tracy doesn't seem to know what sort of character he's meant to be playing in such a schizophrenic story so doesn't really try to imbue any character into his part. The dog however performs admirably.
Watching this, and assuming it must have some cultural context, it's interesting to see how lightly marriage seems to have been treated in 1932. People seem to get married at the drop of a hat. Security seemed to have taken precedence over love - or maybe the definition of love had to be more practical back in those difficult times? Also considering this was made during prohibition, everyone seems to be getting drunk all the time but maybe that's how they copped with such a pathetic script?