(80 min) Released 1938-03-24
Directors: Mervyn LeRoy, Bobby Connolly
Stars: Carole Lombard, Fernand Gravey, Ralph Bellamy
Genres: Comedy | Music | Romance
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030145/
Watched online, fuzzy print.
The landed in my Musicals to Watch list because it was tagged with the Music genre. I can imagine that if I'd seen it on Jeni LeGon's filmo', or Bobby Connolly's, that I would have added it manually.
Unfortunately, there is no dancing to speak of. Jeni sings a song, which is fine, but she didn't dance, and this film was NOT in the Tap! Appendix. This was the last of BC's 4 director credits; we have 8 more DD credits to watch; BC dies young (no reason given in IMDb).
As much as I like CL, this film mostly falls flat for me. I did like the scene where the dialog rhymed like song lyrics (and were set to music, but the stars recited them, not singing,) The lyrics were Lorenz Hart, so of course I liked them.
I don't like the male lead, who is French (but had no accent here), and his films are unlikely to cross my path in the future.
I don't like the oft-used premise of "you know you love me, even though you say no again and again." It's on the continuum of sexual harassment/assault. And when the movies show a woman saying "no" with a wink and a nod, and then she indeed converts to "yes", they are laying the foundation for moving along that continuum in a very negative way. (I know this is '38, and I shouldn't expect them to be so "woke", but I still don't like it.)
It's trying to be a screwball comedy, but it's not funny enough, especially not to overcome the last 2 paragraphs.
Warner, dir. LeRoy & Connolly; 5+
