Leslie Howard and Bette Davis team up for the third and last time in it's Love I'm After. Davis who played both ends of the emotional spectrum (hateful zest in Of Human Bondage, sentimental romantic in The Petrified Forest) with the sensitive Howard does a campy version of both while Howard manages to overact overacting as an egotistical cad.
Basil Underwood (Howard) is the toast of the Broadway stage with legions of fans. Engaged to Joyce Arden (Davis) he continually seeks out ways to put off the marriage. When he visits an ardent fan Marcia West (Olivia De Havilland) as a favor to someone to break her of her wanderlust plans go awry. In spite of the most boorish behavior Marcia breaks her engagement to pursue Basil further complicating his relationship with Joyce.
It's Love I'm After has some raucous moments but lacks the restraint of more successful and subversive screwball comedies of its era. Director Archie Mayo, who got such touching performances from Howard and Davis as the star crossed lovers in Forest allows them to run amok from start to finish with one strident flourish after another that wears this film out two thirds of the way through.
Olivia DeHavilland displays an energized innocence as Marcia while Eric Blore as Underwood's valet gets the biggest laughs (especially in his scenes with Howard) but the rest of the cast is left to fend for themselves with a series of indignant and confused expressions making it an untapped reservoir that in the surer hands of screwball progenitors like Sturges and Hawks might have displayed more control and thrown more strikes.
Basil Underwood (Howard) is the toast of the Broadway stage with legions of fans. Engaged to Joyce Arden (Davis) he continually seeks out ways to put off the marriage. When he visits an ardent fan Marcia West (Olivia De Havilland) as a favor to someone to break her of her wanderlust plans go awry. In spite of the most boorish behavior Marcia breaks her engagement to pursue Basil further complicating his relationship with Joyce.
It's Love I'm After has some raucous moments but lacks the restraint of more successful and subversive screwball comedies of its era. Director Archie Mayo, who got such touching performances from Howard and Davis as the star crossed lovers in Forest allows them to run amok from start to finish with one strident flourish after another that wears this film out two thirds of the way through.
Olivia DeHavilland displays an energized innocence as Marcia while Eric Blore as Underwood's valet gets the biggest laughs (especially in his scenes with Howard) but the rest of the cast is left to fend for themselves with a series of indignant and confused expressions making it an untapped reservoir that in the surer hands of screwball progenitors like Sturges and Hawks might have displayed more control and thrown more strikes.