"The Tip Off" is one of those movies that changed colors towards the end. What was generally a funny movie for most of it became sappy and serious at the end.
The movie stars Eddie Quillan as Thomas 'Tommy' Jordan, an energetic radio repairman. The course of his life changed when he went to repair a prizefighter's radio.
A series of events happened which led to Tommy falling in love with a gangster's girlfriend named Edna Moreno (Joan Peters). The events included Kayo McClure (Robert Armstrong), the prizefighter, and his girl Baby Face (Ginger Rogers), a girl Tommy didn't want any part of for fear of Kayo. Edna Moreno "belonged" to Nick Vatelli (Ralf Harolde), the gangster, though she didn't like him at all.
"The Tip Off" was quite funny and lighthearted for a time, then it got serious. The scrawny, street dumb Tommy became a fearless fighter when it came to Edna. He was willing to risk life and limb just to prevent her from marrying Nick Vatelli (Ralf Harolde). Had they done it more comedically I think the movie would've been so much better.
I guess in their efforts to make Tommy more heroic they had to make Nick Vatelli more sinister and cutthroat. The problem is, gangsters like Nick don't get to prominence by being careless and dumb. There's no way he would've been outdone by a clueless kid unless that kid had significant help.
Hollywood was really fickle when it came to gangsters. They'd prop them up in the beginning by making them seem smart and ruthless, then by the end they'd have the gangsters do something idiotic or clumsy to cause their demise. It's not consistent. And "The Tip Off" wasn't consistent. If you're a comedy with a silly protagonist, remain a comedy with a silly protagonist, but make sure everything else fits as well.
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The movie stars Eddie Quillan as Thomas 'Tommy' Jordan, an energetic radio repairman. The course of his life changed when he went to repair a prizefighter's radio.
A series of events happened which led to Tommy falling in love with a gangster's girlfriend named Edna Moreno (Joan Peters). The events included Kayo McClure (Robert Armstrong), the prizefighter, and his girl Baby Face (Ginger Rogers), a girl Tommy didn't want any part of for fear of Kayo. Edna Moreno "belonged" to Nick Vatelli (Ralf Harolde), the gangster, though she didn't like him at all.
"The Tip Off" was quite funny and lighthearted for a time, then it got serious. The scrawny, street dumb Tommy became a fearless fighter when it came to Edna. He was willing to risk life and limb just to prevent her from marrying Nick Vatelli (Ralf Harolde). Had they done it more comedically I think the movie would've been so much better.
I guess in their efforts to make Tommy more heroic they had to make Nick Vatelli more sinister and cutthroat. The problem is, gangsters like Nick don't get to prominence by being careless and dumb. There's no way he would've been outdone by a clueless kid unless that kid had significant help.
Hollywood was really fickle when it came to gangsters. They'd prop them up in the beginning by making them seem smart and ruthless, then by the end they'd have the gangsters do something idiotic or clumsy to cause their demise. It's not consistent. And "The Tip Off" wasn't consistent. If you're a comedy with a silly protagonist, remain a comedy with a silly protagonist, but make sure everything else fits as well.
Free on Odnoklassniki.