ShangLuda Admirable film.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

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

classicsoncall Most of the stuff that occurs in the story stretches the limits of credibility but at least Powell and Loy have a good time doing it. This is screwball comedy in high gear, paced by the high energy of the players, especially after Steve Ireland's (William Powell) attorney recommends an insanity defense in a divorce proceeding brought by Mrs. Ireland (Myrna Loy) over a misunderstanding. Did you notice though, even after four years of marriage the Ireland's were sleeping in separate beds.I'm pretty sure I saw something about this in another film but just chalked it up to a writer's imagination, but this time when the story introduced a Lunacy Commission I had to look it up. Turns out there was such a thing; in England a Lunacy Commission was a public body established to oversee asylums and the welfare of the mentally ill. In New York, the state legislature did away with it's own version of a Lunacy Commission which it considered a patronage racket. That occurred in the Winter of 1940, so it appears that the screen writers got this one in just under the wire.Reading some of the other viewer comments there seems to be high regard for Powell's cross dressing caper in this one and he did do a pretty good job as his own sister. But the stunt that really caught my eye was that time he did a remarkable flip with a ladder on the grounds of the sanitarium, with his head winding up in between the rungs! I hope he was lucky enough to do that in one take! I'm sure Thin Man fans will get a kick out of this film. It came out just about the middle of that series of pictures, with Powell and Loy pretty much in the same mode as a lovey dovey couple until things go awry with Isobel Grayson (Gail Patrick), Ward Willoughby (Jack Carson), the ping ponging elevator, the Bristol Party, the watch stealing cockatoo, divorce court, the Lunacy Commission and that blasted infernal rug. At times you can even make sense of it.

vincentlynch-moonoi I think many of us love the Thin Man series -- the sophisticated humor with the mysteries really worked well. But I actually prefer this film because the unparalleled chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy is still there, but the story line gives William Powell an opportunity to be silly -- and I mean really silly -- and even do a little slapstick...the type of role we rarely saw him in. Not to mention -- how many times have you seen him in drag? It's delightful.The story involves an anniversary night that goes all wrong, ending up with the wife (Loy) leaving the husband (Powell) over misunderstandings and some bad judgment on both parts. Powell and his lawyer come up with a solution -- act crazy to delay the divorce...but that works all too well, and Powell is committed. How he gets out, and what he goes through while in and after escaping, is where most of the belly laughs lie.Florence Bates plays the mother-in-law from...well, not quite hell...but close to it. She was always a hoot. Jack Carson falls into being the other man; an annoying role at first, but it grew on me.Highly recommended!

mountainstonePT A terribly written film, obviously milking the Powell/ Loy magic long after it was gone. Don't waste your time. An unfunny movie. Not even clever.While the Thin Man and subsequent sequels were clever, by 41 it seems they should have killed this pairing. Bad scripting showed along with half hearted acting that they were only in it for the money. While the movie was not specifically a Thin Man film, the plot was pulling from it, and the insanity plea for the divorce was really lame, probably even by those standards. I found the movie boring and distasteful. Couldn't wait for it to end. You'll do yourself a favor passing on it.

tedg This should be seen by any aspiring director.Its a disaster. Yet it has a good enough set of screwball situations, and one of the best light comedy teams ever. What's missing? A pulse. Its something beyond merely lacking in comic timing. Creating a screwball world means the light has to crackle. Things have to move in an unreal, hyperreal way, veering both in jerks and in unexpected directions. To do that you have to have a rhythm to syncopate, to play against. And that means you have to have a director who feels the music of the story. So the lesson for directors here is in what not to do. This has the pace of a silent film drama. It has room to breath and us to settle into. That's wrong; our mind should be stabbing this instead of stroking it.Its a poor state when I have to recommend that a film is bad in an educational way, but that's the case here.Oh, the story has a mild fold in the vein of "Vertigo." A man wishes to make a story within the story and gets captured by it.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.