Winifred
The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
Madilyn
Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
richard.fuller1
I couldn't believe this film had such a rich look to it in the beginning, mainly for Arthur standing in the rain in her first scene.Then she does the truly bizarre bit and runs to the little shop and orders, "a facial and a shampoo" and comes out gussied up like a typical Hollywood starlet. How about that dress? Yea, that looks inconspicuous on the busy NY street, don't it? Then we get a coffin, she faints, and McCrea ends up exchanging ties with a guy holding a gun on him.It lost me completely with all this, cuz this was all nothing but a joke.After that, I hardly paid attention and am surprised to see the reviews here involved BANK ROBBERY! I caught on to none of this. All in all, it's quite a shame, as the beginning looked purely authentic, but it all turned on 'a facial and a shampoo' for me.
mark.waltz
If you can forgive the cruel prank played on reporter Joel McCrea at the very beginning by his lesson-teaching boss (Thomas Mitchell) with the help of a nutty actress (Jean Arthur), then you can find some amusement with everything that happens next. It all surrounds the theft of a valuable gem, and the romance that blossoms between McCrea and Arthur after the initial misunderstanding. The screenplay takes the storyline all over the map and while you are wondering if you've missed some important development, you suddenly realize that this is the mood the script writer was going for. It is perhaps a bit more complex than a screwball comedy can be, and the cruel element of the opening might even turn the viewer off to turn the movie off, but stick with it. The sticky plot twists are sometimes ridiculous. Herman Bing, the S.Z. Sakall of the 1930's, overacts with gusto, and appears to be the influence for John Banner's Sergeant Schultz of TV's "Hogan's Heroes".
blanche-2
Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur have an "Adventure in Manhattan" in this 1936 film, also starring Thomas Mitchell and Reginald Owen, and directed by Edward Ludwig.McCrea plays a sharp criminal reporter who is convinced that a world-famous thief, believed dead, is actually very much alive and responsible for some big heists that have taken place. He meets Arthur, a young actress, and the two fall in love as McCrea tries to prove his theory.This is a really enjoyable film, with delightful performances by McCrea and Arthur. It's a bit all over the place - part screwball, part mystery. I frankly didn't see much of Nick and Nora Charles in it as others have. But the dialogue is bright, McCrea and Arthur have good chemistry, and some aspects of the mystery are good. McCrea is often thought of as sort of a poor man's Gary Cooper: a handsome, hunky all-American. In westerns there is more of a similarity, with Cooper having more gravitas, but McCrea's lighter touch and more overt personality lent themselves well to comedy. That's where he and Cooper parted company.Enjoyable, and with a better script, it would have been terrific.
hcoursen
It takes a deft touch to produce an amusing crime drama -- as Powell and Loy did for Nick and Nora and as "Mr and Mrs North" did on radio in the 40s. This one begins to get interesting as the McCrea character sneaks into a house to check out the cruel joke that has apparently been played on Jean Arthur. But it turns out that the joke is on him and a suspenseful situation becomes preposterous. The elaborate hoax seems beyond the capabilities of its practitioners. And the comment that suggests that the ring of crooks is entirely too large is accurate. The film oscillates between noir and screwball comedy and the two genre compete with each other. The film never decides what it wants to be and ends up being a generic midair collision.
