No Time for Comedy

1940 "A country boy takes over Broadway . . . until he gets into heart-trouble!"
6.2| 1h38m| NR| en
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An aspiring playwright finds himself an overnight Broadway success.

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Ensofter Overrated and overhyped
2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!
Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
JohnHowardReid This comedy of manners with a theatrical background offers a good First Act, but bogs down in the Second Act, and then drops right down completely and absolutely in the Third. Mind you, the proceedings are not helped by the blatant over-acting of Genevieve Tobin!Keighley's direction is lively enough in the First Act, but is as dull as the script in Acts Two and Three! All the talking, talking, back and forth, seems to go on forever!The movie's production values don't impress either!At least the title is dead on! No time for comedy, for sure!
marylois-788-910304 No Time For Comedy is one of those glittering baubles about the theatre of the 1930s. Originally staged in New York for Katherine Cornell and featuring a callow young Laurence Olivier as her earnest playwright husband who drinks too much because he's convinced he's wasting his talent writing comedy when the world is such a wretched place, it was reworked for Jimmy Stewart and Rosalind Russell, and for me the movie plays as well if not better than the play.I was familiar with S.N. Behrman's elegant script and as I saw the film I was a bit confused. A whole new act had been added at the beginning to define the playwright as an awkward kid from Minnesota, swimming with sharks for the first time as his play is produced in New York. Jimmy Stewart was at his best, transitioning from a stammering yahoo to a gentleman drunk, and rising to the occasion to hammer out what he hopes will be a masterpiece with the help of a conniving female (Genevieve Tobin). Rosalind Russell is up to the role of the glamorous actress, the foil for the insecure playwright on the way up (and down), and Charlie Ruggles is wise and sophisticated and totally believable as the husband of the conniver and later suitor to the actress. Tobin is quite adroit, playing the conniver as a Billie Burke-type, although not quite pretty enough to convince me Stewart would leave Russell for her.It's a very satisfying film if you like the genre, and it's always a pleasure to see Jimmy Stewart so at home in a "stagey" piece.
MartinHafer The first portion of "No Time for Comedy" is excellent--and I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, somewhere around the middle, it was like the characters had head injuries (particularly James Stewart) and began acting weird...along with some new and annoying friends. As a result, the film really lost its momentum and its way.The film begins with a playwright (Stewart) being called to Broadway to do some re-writes for the play. They are in rehearsals and the play just doesn't quite flow the way they'd hoped. Stewart is not at all like they expected. After all, the play is a smart drawing room comedy featuring the upper crust--and Stewart is some Midwestern yokel who has never even been to the big city or been with the smart set. After some teething problems, however, the play is a success. This part of the film is very charming and seeing him and Rosalind Russell together was a treat.The next portion of the film really stopped making sense. Now that Stewart and Russell are married, suddenly the sweet guy has turned into a major butt-head--a very selfish one at that. Now he drinks heavily and begins hanging out with the world's most superficial and annoying married woman anyone could imagine (Genevieve Tobin). While I hated the change in Stewart's character (since it seemed so out of character), everything about Tobin was wrong...100% wrong. Her character made no sense at all and was played so broadly you'd wonder how any semi-sane person could fall for this super-annoying....'lady'. Also incongruous is her husband (Charlie Ruggles)--he simply made no sense at all as the annoyed but unbelievably passive rich husband. At this point, the only person who comes off halfway convincing is Russell...but even she occasionally behaves oddly. It was really as if the film had two different writers who didn't even read each other's scripts before combining them.The overall film really looks like two separate films. The first half I'd score an 8 and the second I'd score a 3. It really would have been improved with a revision...a re-write like Stewart's character was called in to do when the movie began. Not a good film, though it looks nice and has some lovely scenes. The bad just outweighs the good.By the way, after Stewart behaved abominably through much of the film, why would Russell's character STILL want him?! What sort of screwy message is this projecting at women?!
nycritic Russell and Stewart. Both actors with career highs the previous year, 1939 -- she with THE WOMEN, he with MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON which earned him his first Academy nod for Best Actor. Both with careers entering high gear at the dawn of the 40s with fine performances, she in HIS GIRL Friday, he with THE PHILADELPHIA STORY for which he finally did win the Oscar. Together they should have succeeded together as main players in a movie.So what failed? The fact that this was a truly awful story, ill-conceived for any medium, stage or film, and the fact that Stewart's role is not very sympathetic -- a rarity. He comes across too petty, irritatingly self-involved with his own success as a writer that one also wonders why Russell's character, a successful stage actress, would stay with him at all. In today's world, a divorce would have been in order faster than yesterday's news, and even then they were taking place within the rich and famous. Which makes me go to the second problem in the film --Russell plays a role that Greer Garson could practically sleepwalk through, and does so in a way that makes you feel sorry for her, but also makes you want to dive into the screen and smack her with something hard. Comedy was her specialty -- this was Russell trying to prove she could also do drama, and it does not work in her favor.And what on Earth is Genvieve Tobin doing in this film? She looks crazy from the start, so completely affected she makes "stage British" look genuine, and her presence brings the film to a dead halt. That she doesn't quite get her comeuppance for nearly destroying a marriage is beyond me.Louise Beavers fares even worse: she plays Russell's maid and what she does is repeat her "resigned, but jolly" role until it's dead on the floor. But, to give her credit, she does get screen time, and high billing in a time when black actors/actresses were barely seen.NO TIME FOR COMEDY drains the life out of the comedy and remains only a footnote mention in both Russell's and Stewart's careers.