SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

ReganRebecca Christopher Strong is a rather short and underbaked movie. The film starts out with a young woman and her boyfriend participating in a treasure hunt where they have to find a woman over twenty who has never had a love affair and a man who has been married over 5 years who has never had an affair. The woman brings her father, the titular Christopher Strong, along and her boyfriend finds a career driven aviator Cynthia Darrington, who will cop to being over twenty and having had no boyfriends. There is an immediate attraction between Christopher and Cynthia and the bulk of the movie is devoted to the eventual consummation of their love affair and the consequences that follow. This was only Hepburn's second movie, but Darrington is a classic Hepburn role, independent, honest, and tomboyish. Colin Clive is really too young for the role he was meant to play and has ridiculously little chemistry with Hepburn. They barely register as a couple at all. Unless you're a fan of one of the stars or an Arzner completist, this pre-code film isn't really worth your time.

mark.waltz In an eerie forecast of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the story of female pilot Cynthia Darrington and her love affair with an older married man (Colin Clive) is a haunting melodrama of one woman's search for independence and the revelation that her sins make her more dependent. She is the best friend of Clive's rebellious daughter (Helen Chandler), an amoral young woman also in love with a married man. Torn between her love for Clive and her own scruples, Cynthia is forced to make a drastic decision, especially after helping Chandler through her ordeal and being thanked for her kindness by Clive's noble wife (Billie Burke in a very serious part) who is disappointed by the lack of "nice" people in their social circle. Will Hepburn choose to break up this marriage in order to secure her own happiness, or will she break it off to prevent herself from becoming one of those selfish social nothings who don't care whom they hurt, as long as their own happiness is secure? In just her second film, Katharine Hepburn proves that she has what it takes to be more than just a one-hit wonder. She's simply breathtaking to watch, a plethora of emotions and in definite conflict with herself because of something which occurred that was beyond her control. Colin Clive is quite different here as the romantic older man she can't bear to be without, not at all like his mad doctor in "Frankenstein". This is quite a nice dramatic role for Billie Burke who didn't start acting all dizzy in her movies until after she had been established. With this and her outstanding bitchy role as the society woman planning "Dinner at Eight", she would have been the front runner for a Supporting Actress Oscar had they been given out in 1933.Wearing a gold lamé costume in one sequence which looks like something borrowed from MGM's "Madame Satan", Katherine Hepburn photographs gorgeously, and that voice is "rally" spectacular to listen to, obviously theatrically trained and truly nobody's fool as she takes over the male dominated world of early talking pictures. Her career would be a bumpy ride during her first decade of movie acting because her personality off screen and on was something nobody had seen before. But what makes a star? The ability to stand out on your own and create something that is like no other, and that is what the essence of the great Kate remains to this day. She remains, along with a few others, a truly great icon of entertainment, and that is what makes a legend most!

bkoganbing I'm not quite sure why the title of this film is not Lady Cynthia Darrington since the film rises and falls on the action of Hepburn's character and not on Colin Clive's title role of Christopher Strong.Clive is a most proper member of Parliament, probably a Tory, who through a treasure hunt, a la My Man Godfrey, he meets Hepburn who is a young titled woman who has an interest in aviation. In fact she's the British version of Amelia Earhart.Clive and wife Billie Burke have a daughter, Helen Chandler, who is something of a wild child. She's having an affair with the unhappily married Ralph Forbes. But before long it's Clive and Hepburn who get involved.Colin Clive gives us a perfect portrayal of a man going through midlife crisis when everything just seems to settle in a dull routine. He's so taken by Hepburn's vitality and independence that their affair has an inevitability about it.Dorothy Arzner one of the few women directors around at that point also gives us one of Kate's very first feminist icon roles. Her first film, A Bill of Divorcement, had Kate as a dutiful daughter who gives up her man to care for an insane father. Kate has some critical choices to make in Christopher Strong as well.What she does might not make sense to today's audience, but made perfectly good sense in post Victorian Great Britain. She and Clive make a wonderful pair of tragic lovers in a drama that while old fashioned still holds up.

moonspinner55 Merry madcaps in London stage a treasure hunt, with one young woman inadvertently fixing up her married politician father with a strong, independent lady-flier who's never been in love. Intriguing early vehicle for Katharine Hepburn, playing an Amelia Earhart-like aviatrix who's been too self-involved to give herself over to any man. The director (Dorothy Arzner) and the screenwriter (Zoe Akins, who adapted Gilbert Frankau's book) were obviously assigned to this project to get the female point of view, but why are all the old clichés kept intact like frozen artifacts? Billie Burke plays the type of simpering, weepy wife who takes to her bed when thing go wrong, and Hepburn's final scene is another bummer. A curious artifact, but not a classic for Kate-watchers. ** from ****