Reviews

This needed merciless editing. I just watched this last night, so I have some things fresh in my mind. The scene with Kong on top of the Empire State and the planes went on too long. The slow-mo shots for no reason were annoying and insulting to the viewer; lingering shot of the chloroform bottle and sailors poised with harpoons, cut to gorilla, back to chloroform. We get it! Is Ann a dumb blonde or something? The relationship between the black guy and Jimmy was irrelevant, unresolved, and pointless. As was the beginning with Ann in vaudeville and the closing of the theater and the relationship with the old guy. So what? Ann's desperation and morals could have been illustrated with just nailing the "Closed" sign on the theater and Ann refusing to dance nekkid, Jackson having belabored the depression in the opening sequences. Thus, she is forced to steal the apple and be rescued by Jack Black's Carl Denham. I thought the acting was fine, from Watts to Brody to Jack Black. I liked the comic relief of the vain actor Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler), even though much of that levity could have been dispensed with as well. I felt the time spent on the entire boat crew was utterly wasted. Who cares? They aren't germane to the plot. The creepy native scenes also were overly drawn out. In the third act, the incongruity of Jack Driscoll leading Kong on a rampage through the streets while driving the taxi; why? He incited Kong to cause more damage. Where was he taking him? Away from Ann? Driscoll didn't know where Ann was, as evidence by him asking Preston (Colin Hanks), another pointless character, where Ann was when he was watching Kong in the theater. Yet, there she is in the middle of the street to rejoin Kong, so he failed miserably if his intent was to divert Kong from finding Ann. Inconsistencies like these ruin the suspension of disbelief and lead me to think Kong chasing the taxi was another chance to flip around CGI effects old-timey autos.

The photography is lush, the effects are superb, Kong the gorilla is masterfully done. It's just too frickin' long, and I think tried too hard to outdo the original 1933 Kong. Just can't be done. That's a classic, hokey dialog, outdated effects, black and white photography notwithstanding. The new Kong is worth seeing for effects but little else.

Olivia Grayne (Rosalind Russell), a prim-looking, bespectacled young woman in tweed skirts, twinsets, and sensible shoes, lives in a country house with her crabby aunt Mrs. Bramson (Dame May Witty) and suffers the indignity of being treated like a servant while employed as her aunt's companion. She is ardently pursued by her aunt's lawyer Justin Laurie (Alan Marshal, a ringer for Laurence Olivier), who is handsome and good. Frankly, I would have left with him long ago. He asks her to marry him and says, "Even if you don't love me, aren't I better than the old lady?" Indeed!! Olivia longs for some adventure or excitement in her life of drab monotony, but doesn't think it's ever going to happen.

That changes when Dora, one of the maids, confesses tearfully to being "in trouble" by a messenger from another house. Mrs. Bramson agrees to see him to make him do right by the girl. Into their lives comes Danny (Robert Montgomery), a strutting Irish charmer whose silver tongue so enchants the old lady, she offers him a job. He nonchalantly agrees to marry the maid, like many sociopaths who toss off the answer they know needs to be said without any intention of actually doing so. Indeed, soon enough Danny is taking dinner with the ladies of the house and being served by the maid presumably carrying his baby.

Olivia sees right through Danny from the start. She becomes interested in him, though, because he's good-looking, different, and has that dangerous bad-boy vibe going on. But she's also repulsed my his servile attitude to the old cantankerous battle-axe and his facile way with the truth. Nonetheless, after he tells her she would be prettier "without them glasses on," we don't see her wearing them much.

When the lady of the house from his previous employment turns up dead, nude, and decapitated in the woods, Danny seems to know her far too intimately to have been just her servant. Olivia twigs onto this immediately, and has her suspicions. Olivia wonders what is in the hatbox under the bed that is much too heavy for a hat and why he's never unpacked his things.

Nonetheless, Olivia saves his bacon when the police inspector wants to look through his things and she claims his hatbox as her own. She feels a little sorry for him and we guess that even she doesn't know quite why she did this.

There's a lot of sexual tension between Danny and Olivia. This is played out in quite a charged fashion in the kitchen scene. Olivia goes to make tea because she can't sleep. Danny is also awake, troubled by something. He hears someone in the kitchen, goes to investigate, and scares the bejesus out of Olivia. He pegs her spot on, telling her, "You want adventure, don't you? It's right here in this house, right here in this kitchen, with the two of us, alone here, at this time of night. It's exciting, isn't it?" He tells her, as she is breathing hard and blushing, that she's never been alone with a chap like him but she likes it, and it's a secret part of her she never knew existed. He comes closer to her, close enough to kiss…It's true, she is excited. But it's dangerous too, and she knows it. I won't spoil the scene for you; you'll have to see it for yourself.

This was the first performance I had seen Montgomery give. I went back and saw his romantic comedies and then saw this again. He is wonderful in it, and indeed was nominated for an Academy Award. His Irish accent is very good. His demeanor as the insouciant servant who starts out mouthing platitudes to all and sundry and by the end of the story is displaying his contempt of them is very well-played. His good looks worked for him in this role, as who would believe someone so handsome would be a killer? Indeed, would many women have cuddled up with Ted Bundy had he looked creepy and frightening? That's just how sociopaths work; and Montgomery pretty much nails it. Russell is good as well in the kind of role that would be left in the dust as she moved on the screwball comedies in just a few years. Dame May Witty, as the malingering old biddy, is too perfect with her complaints of palpitations, bosom-clutching, and rattling around in a wheelchair she clearly doesn't need. Her hysterics late in the film, when everyone has left her alone and she has the "jitters," is classically comical.

The story holds up but some of the film's flaws include staginess and talkiness (over two hours long). You can tell it started life as a play because most of the action takes place in one room from which all others open off. I also found heavy-handed the device of using threatening music when Danny enters the room. Also, mention is made that the body has not been found yet and promptly there is a scream from offstage and a policeman rushes in to use the phone to report that the body has indeed been found. Stagy! It doesn't quite hold up to thriller standards by today's viewpoint but still atmospheric, and the set design is beautiful and the performances, especially Montgomery's, are well worth seeing. In fact, this role was not given to Montgomery as some sort of punishment by MGM, as suggested by another post. Louis B. Mayer was astounded Montgomery wanted to play this type of role at all, and Bob had to fight for it. If all you know of him is the fluffy romantic movies where he waltzed around pretty women and said things like, "I love you, and you love me too, admit it," do see him acting quite differently in this film.

I kept waiting for this movie to be better. I love Robert Montgomery, and the supporting players here (Edmund Gwenn, Edward Arnold) are stellar. But Montgomery is painfully miscast as Silky Kinmount, the Chicago tough guy who runs a distillery and inherits a British title and thinks only of the ten million dollars the land will get him. He then goes to England with his manager, Ramsey (Arnold) whom he has coaxed into being such without realizing Ramsey intends to get even for landing in the poky for seven years through Kinmount's machinations. He sees the chance when he gets power of attorney for Kinmont and goes with him to England, where he proceeds to destroy Kinmount's business and keeps him in the dark about his English lands, which are entailed by inheritance and cannot be broken up or sold.

This movie seems to have been made a decade too late for this type of character. Montgomery's attempt at a tough-guy accent is painful and unintentionally funny, better suited to a skit on "The Carol Burnett Show," than an MGM movie. Not a screwball comedy, not a gangster picture, not an English drawing room movie, it's all bits and pieces with no style or substance. Montgomery's charm and style and distinctive flair are utterly absent in this movie. He simply does not have the grit to pull off a true Chicago-style crass gangster.

As a woman, I must object to the fact that the only love interest in this movie is seen from the shapely legs down. Surely a guy like Silky would have a beautiful woman hanging around, doncha think? Like other reviewers have said, this movie had so many opportunities to turn into a good movie, like exploring the relationship between Silky and his British teenage cousin or between Silky and the people who live on his land just for the honor of sharing space with a Lord, thereby redeeming this unlikable character. It does not do any of that, and instead ends as Silky is hung for the murder of Ramsey, after being helped on with his peer's robes by the kindly butler (Gwenn) and a bizarre courtroom scene where Kimnount seems to have gone completely nuts and probably could have qualified for an insanity defense.

Other reviewers also pointed out that the Silky part would have been right for Edward G. Robinson or that the parts of Arnold and Montgomery should have been reversed, and I agree entirely. Some parts simply require an inner quality that lacks even through the best of acting, as is the case here. Montgomery was truly from the upper class and then had to go to work when his father died, so he knew both worlds and could play both, but not this gritty, nearly illiterate, semi-bootlegger type. He could play a cad and a heel, a tuxedo-wearing playboy, or a harried husband with equal ease. This just wasn't his role. Do yourself a favor and skip this Montgomery performance.

Basically interesting just to see Tallullah Bankhead acting in one of her few film roles. Alas, she is miscast as a society girl who loses all her money in the Depression. She spars with her ad-man boyfriend (the always-great Robert Montgomery) but will not give up her lavish lifestyle to live on his money and so will not marry him. When they both lose it all in the crash and Montgomery sustains injuries when he gets caught in a labor riot and is unable to work, Bankhead must take to the streets as a prostitute to support them. In a few years, this kind of character would be run down by a bus instead of persevering, damn that Production Code. Anyway, Montgomery is handsome but clueless as the ethical ad man (and he must have been bored out of his mind at these romantic leading man roles MGM stuffed him into; no wonder he fought so hard to play the psychotic decapitator of "Night Must Fall"!) but plays his role well. Bankhead, a stage actress and undeniably decadent and somewhat louche in her private life, does not come off well in this self-sacrificing role. However, she does have some good lines, my favorite one being when she is introduced to Montgomery's brother: "Oh, a metallurgist! What kind of metal do you urge? Does it succumb easily or does it take a lot of coaxing?" Fabulous!

Blondie (Davies) and her friend Lottie (Dove) want out of the hardscrabble tenement life. Lottie is willing to become mistress to a man (Montgomery) in order to have a nice apartment and fine clothes in addition to a job in the Follies. Both Davies and Dove, in addition to being good friends in real life, were also both Ziegfield Follies girls, so art imitates life in that way. Also, as we all know, Davies was the long-time mistress of William Randolph Hearst, whose fiddling with this movie is quite apparent. In addition to cutting Dove's part neatly to shreds to focus more on Davies, the character Blondie starts out as fun-loving, adorable, generous, as Davies reportedly was, but then gets bogged down in Dickensian martyrdom, which does not behoove the film or Marion the actress.

Lottie and Blondie both want Bob Montgomery, despite the fact that he has treated Lottie cavalierly, and Blondie decided to settle for the shipping magnate (sounds familiar, doesn't it?) They come to blows over him, get jealous of each other in the Follies, and both decide not to see him anymore. But their friendship is compromised nonetheless.

The first half of this film is rompishly good fun, with Blondie the cut-up appearing to reflect a lot of the real-life Marion. Too had Hearst insisted on putting her in so many dreary costume dramas; she was truly a gifted comedienne and would have done smashingly in the screwball comedies yet to come. Alas, Hearst wanted his Marion to be beautiful and dignified on screen, thus robbing us all of her witty comedic style. The second half of this movie bogs down in sentimental boo-hooetry, with Blondie bravely gimping along with her crutches like Tiny Tim (the Dickens character, not the Tiptoe-Through-The-Tulips dude.) Montgomery's character becomes unselfish, presumably from love for Blondie, and does the noble thing as our characters ride metaphorically off into the sunset. Blech.

Watch the first half and skip the rest. The minute Blondie goes flying off the end of the whip on the Follies stage is a good time to shut it off. You've seen the best. I won't even go into the awkward, unfunny, incomprehensible inclusion of Jimmy Durante in a party scene. But that's later in the movie, so you're likely to miss it once Blondie lands on her backside in the orchestra pit.

I also enjoyed ZaSu Pitts as Blondie's sister and James Gleason as her long-suffering "Pa." Again, once these characters exit stage left, the rest of the movie slides downhill. Anyway, it's a funky little precode and enjoy that first half!

Putrid. Bad acting, directing, storyline. The story had a lot of promise, along with a cast including Holly Hunter and Kathy Bates. Ron Livingston as her boyfriend is about as charming here as he was as Post-It-Note break-up artist Jack Berger on Sex and the City. Brittany Murphy is too charisma-free to carry a starring role. She was fabulous in Clueless, I loved her in it, as a secondary character part. Romantic lead, no, no, and NO. I just could not stand her in this role. Way too much Carly Simon music. Unbelievable ending, landing a job with Diane Sawyer and meeting Carly Simon on the same day. My opinion of this movie has nothing to do with it not being a typical "happy ending" movie where the girl and guy live happily ever after. Lots of truly great movies have endings like that (Casablanca to name just one). It is just bad bad bad. Kathy Bates looks lobotomized through this movie; perhaps she was hypnotized by the paycheck. The only good thing in it was Kevin Sussman. Take a pass.