With an uppity, social climbing wife (Charlotte Greenwood) and a spoiled, selfish daughter (Lynn Bari), veterinarian Charlie Ruggles prefers to spend time with his patients over his family. Purposely forgetting about daughter Bari's graduation from finishing school, Ruggles is nagged by Greenwood into dropping his pooch patient and rushing home, actually arriving while she's still telling him off on the phone. Without Ruggles' knowledge, Greenwood and Bari then take off for Hawaii where Bari is preparing to marry the much older stuffed shirt (Alan Mowbray), part of Greenwood's scheme to get them into high society. But Ruggles finds out, shows up out of the blue to Greenwood's annoyance, and schemes to break up the ill-suited engagement with the help of local hunk Cornel Wilde who makes his living breaking up such ill-suited arrangements and is thus quite well off himself. Greenwood is aghast by all this and hires Wilde's pal Anthony Quinn to do the same exact thing, putting husband and wife against each other with sometimes amusing results that help Ruggles grow a backbone.
This innocuous "B" comedy suffers from having an extremely unlikable young heroine (Bari) who is written to be completely self involved and obnoxious. Greenwood at least is funny in her outlandish actions and you expect her to get her comeuppance, which she does several times. But Bari isn't playing a character you root for, and in a mosquito slapping sequence (with Bari and Wilde taking turns hitting the other when a bug lands on their face), it is Bari you want to get the big wallop, not Wilde. There are some underlying hints that Wilde is enjoying this taming of the shrew game, and that once he gets Bari where he wants her, he'll be taking her down a notch in his effort to make her a better person, if that is possible. Quinn gets some very funny moments too. Ultimately, though, it is the fault of the script in its characterization of a "heroine" you are supposed to like (but can't) that makes it a complete disappointment.
This innocuous "B" comedy suffers from having an extremely unlikable young heroine (Bari) who is written to be completely self involved and obnoxious. Greenwood at least is funny in her outlandish actions and you expect her to get her comeuppance, which she does several times. But Bari isn't playing a character you root for, and in a mosquito slapping sequence (with Bari and Wilde taking turns hitting the other when a bug lands on their face), it is Bari you want to get the big wallop, not Wilde. There are some underlying hints that Wilde is enjoying this taming of the shrew game, and that once he gets Bari where he wants her, he'll be taking her down a notch in his effort to make her a better person, if that is possible. Quinn gets some very funny moments too. Ultimately, though, it is the fault of the script in its characterization of a "heroine" you are supposed to like (but can't) that makes it a complete disappointment.