Having seen the lovely Irene Dunne perform many years ago in her better known movie "The Awful Truth" (1937), I looked with great expectations forward to watching my recently acquired DVD "Never a Dull Moment".
However, I soon realized the awful truth that this movie was much below par to any previous movie she has ever starred in. Irene Dunne who was 52 years old at the time and approaching the end of her movie career was poorly matched with Fred MacMurray who was 10 years her junior, which might also explain perhaps the lack of chemistry between the two stars.
The script writing is very poor and lacking of any clever and witty dialog for both of them to work on. In my opinion they could have made the courtship a bit more interesting with some romantic interludes included, instead what we see are a few minutes of the bottom half of legs shoveling through hallways; very unimaginative and cheaply done, but I suppose the priority might have been to get them in a hurry out into the rural country side for all the silly slapstick action.
Irene Dunne also sings in this movie but as much as I love and admire Irene for having been a great actress, singing was definitely not one of her strongest attributes and especially the first number is quite embarrassing; it would have been better if a professional singer had dubbed her voice. It is also made quite obvious that the fast horse riding and being thrown of the horse was done by a stunt person.
All in all a big disappointment, mainly due to bad directing and bad script writing and a sad end to what has otherwise been a great acting career for Irene Dunne, however this movie might appeal to children 8 to 14 on a rainy Sunday afternoon, mainly for the silly slapstick humor and uncomplicated story line which might be more appealing to this age group
However, I soon realized the awful truth that this movie was much below par to any previous movie she has ever starred in. Irene Dunne who was 52 years old at the time and approaching the end of her movie career was poorly matched with Fred MacMurray who was 10 years her junior, which might also explain perhaps the lack of chemistry between the two stars.
The script writing is very poor and lacking of any clever and witty dialog for both of them to work on. In my opinion they could have made the courtship a bit more interesting with some romantic interludes included, instead what we see are a few minutes of the bottom half of legs shoveling through hallways; very unimaginative and cheaply done, but I suppose the priority might have been to get them in a hurry out into the rural country side for all the silly slapstick action.
Irene Dunne also sings in this movie but as much as I love and admire Irene for having been a great actress, singing was definitely not one of her strongest attributes and especially the first number is quite embarrassing; it would have been better if a professional singer had dubbed her voice. It is also made quite obvious that the fast horse riding and being thrown of the horse was done by a stunt person.
All in all a big disappointment, mainly due to bad directing and bad script writing and a sad end to what has otherwise been a great acting career for Irene Dunne, however this movie might appeal to children 8 to 14 on a rainy Sunday afternoon, mainly for the silly slapstick humor and uncomplicated story line which might be more appealing to this age group