9/10
Just wonderful!
24 December 2005
Warning: Spoilers
I'd never heard of this before I saw it on television the other day. It's captivating, fast-paced, very funny, very imaginative, with terrific dialogue and wonderfully funny situations.

Joan Blondell in particular is adorable - playing a vulnerable, smart, fast-moving and thinking, deeply romantic and quick-witted girl. Glenda Farrell is excellent too - as the less romantic of the pair.

Hugh Herbert is terribly funny - one really has to listen to his underplaying of a completely distinctive personality - the closest the movies come is probably Edward Everett Horton's character in films, but their manners and style are quite different.

I love movies like this - they're VERY fast-moving, and the imagination, the sheer delight evident in the making (and thus in the viewing) - is the opposite of the so often hackneyed (or gross) comedies coming out of Hollywood these days.

Perhaps one of the things that most appeals is that the two leads (Blondell and Farrell) are themselves so likable, that you strongly sympathize with them in every wonderfully bizarre situation. (So often I find myself just not LIKING the protagonist in modern romantic comedies - which is fatal to their enjoyment).

Joan Blondell's films of the 1930s (whether comedies or the six she did with Jimmy Cagney with whom she was starring on Broadway when both were discovered by Hollywood) are a great and rather undiscovered treasure for modern audiences. You just can't go wrong with Blondell in this or such films as The Traveling Saleslady, in the Gold Diggers films or anything else I've happened to see from the 1930s.

Do watch it - even though it requires close attention because the dialogue flies as fast as His Girl Friday. You'll be glad you did.
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