(Small spoilers) If you're a fan of Greer Garson (like me) or Robert Taylor (like me) you'll need to see this movie. If you're not a fan, you'll find the first forty minutes to be brilliant but the rest tiresome.
This was Greer Garson's second film, and she's still young and beautiful here, with the full MGM glamour treatment. You can see that she hasn't perfected her acting skills yet; she does that next year in "Pride and Prejudice".
Robert Taylor is delightful in the first half. Yes, he does steal Lew Ayres' fiancée, but Greer is hard to resist. Lew Ayres' character resigns himself to this fate rather easily, having obviously endured it from his friend many times in the past. Taylor is very funny when he gets startled several times. Greer and Taylor are wonderful together, even more so than they are two years later in "When Ladies Meet".
If you're not a fan of either of these two, you'll still enjoy the first half of this movie. There are plenty of gags, funny lines, and good ideas; you could fill a whole web page with the hilarious things that Billie Burke gets to say.
But after the popular surprise-party sequence, everything slows down; the movie could actually end at this point. There is no dramatic need for anything else to happen: up until this point Lew Ayres has never shown any desire to get Greer back. It's not even clear to me why he bothers to slips them the drug, other than to help them forget their misery.
After eighty minutes, the movie ends very abruptly with Greer speaking a line that makes absolutely no sense. This one line will leave you shaking your head and wondering why you bothered with this movie. But go back and watch the first half again.
As I said, if you're a fan, then watch it. Otherwise, if you come across this movie somewhere, watch until the surprise party scene and then be kind and rewind.
This was Greer Garson's second film, and she's still young and beautiful here, with the full MGM glamour treatment. You can see that she hasn't perfected her acting skills yet; she does that next year in "Pride and Prejudice".
Robert Taylor is delightful in the first half. Yes, he does steal Lew Ayres' fiancée, but Greer is hard to resist. Lew Ayres' character resigns himself to this fate rather easily, having obviously endured it from his friend many times in the past. Taylor is very funny when he gets startled several times. Greer and Taylor are wonderful together, even more so than they are two years later in "When Ladies Meet".
If you're not a fan of either of these two, you'll still enjoy the first half of this movie. There are plenty of gags, funny lines, and good ideas; you could fill a whole web page with the hilarious things that Billie Burke gets to say.
But after the popular surprise-party sequence, everything slows down; the movie could actually end at this point. There is no dramatic need for anything else to happen: up until this point Lew Ayres has never shown any desire to get Greer back. It's not even clear to me why he bothers to slips them the drug, other than to help them forget their misery.
After eighty minutes, the movie ends very abruptly with Greer speaking a line that makes absolutely no sense. This one line will leave you shaking your head and wondering why you bothered with this movie. But go back and watch the first half again.
As I said, if you're a fan, then watch it. Otherwise, if you come across this movie somewhere, watch until the surprise party scene and then be kind and rewind.