Road to Paradise

There is nothing of highways or of heaven in this film, so I don't know why it was named as it was. Loretta Young plays a foundling raised by a couple of thieves who decide to rob rich girl Margaret Waring, who looks just like Loretta's character, Mary Brennan, trading on the fact that the two are physically identical. Unfortunately once inside the rich girl's darkened mansion things begin to go awry. The rich girl's boyfriend shows up (Jack Mulhall) and Mary must make him believe she is the real thing - she does all too good a job of it. Then the real Margaret Waring reappears at the house unexpectedly, there's a shooting, Mary's accomplices desert her, and the police arrive at the scene to find two Margaret Warings, one of whom is unconscious.

So what's goofy about the plot besides what I've mentioned? Well, there's a rather far-fetched mind reading plot device that figures heavily into matters, the fact that the police are examining every tree for evidence yet manage to miss the forest, and that Jack Mulhall's character can fall in love based on three sentences from someone who is - at the time - just trying to get rid of him.

The whole thing is a rather suspenseful yet fun mystery/comedy of errors. It really is one of Warner's better early talkie efforts. What's really amazing here is that Loretta Young was only 17 when she made this one yet she can hold her own with any of the older leading actresses of the day that made such drawing room dramas.

"Road to Paradise" is a 1930 film starring Loretta Young in a dual role.

Mary Brennan is a lovely young woman who is in with thieves who raised her. One night at a Chinese restaurant, they all spot her lookalike, Margaret Waring, who is very wealthy. The cons decide to go to her house while she's out, using Mary as her double, and rip her off. Of course, things don't go off without a couple of hitches.

This film, even though it's short, seems long as it moves slowly. It's a very early sound movie, and the actors hadn't yet perfected the speech rhythms.

Loretta Young is luminously beautiful - here, she's about 17 years old. She does a wonderful job of differentiating between the two women as well. Worth seeing for her, not much else.

"I could never understand this desire for respectability. It always seemed kind of morbid to me."

So says one of two crooks who raised respectable, honest "Mary Brennan" (Loretta Young) as an orphan girl and can't understand where they went wrong in raising her! Poor Mary, though, winds up out of work and needs something, and winds up joining these guys in a scheme after they discover has an amazing twin, a rich woman named "Margaret Waring" (Young, playing two roles in this movie). These guys also discover that Mary has amazing mind-reading talents.

This movie turned out to be disappointing because it got more and more ludicrous as it went on. I found the last 25 minutes extremely frustrating and an insult to anyone's intelligence. There are so many holes in this story it would make your head spin. It reminded me of the old Superman TV series, with one thing after another that had no credibility. Unlike Superman, which was fun to watch for a number of reasons, there was only one thing to keep my interest here: a young and beautiful Young.

However, after admiring her looks for about a half hour, I needed the story to make some sense and keep my interest....and this made NO sense. Also, "Mary," who was supposed to be so honest, lied throughout the film. I wonder how Loretta viewed this role in latter years.

Completely bonkers story, weird hammy acting but on the plus side, two Loretta Youngs! Even as a comedy - which I hope this is meant to be - this is a dreadful pile of nonsense. It shouldn't be but inexplicably it's quite a fun watch.

Although director William Beaudine is best known for the Will Hay comedies, his main body of work was churning out literally hundreds of cheap quickies like this. Clearly the maker of WINDBAG THE SAILOR must have had a sense of humour and that permeates all the way through this. The only way for Beaudine to turn such a ridiculous story into a picture without dying of boredom must have been to subversively make it as an absurdist comedy. Either that or he was just a terrible director?

No, he's not a terrible director - the visuals, the fluidity and even the sound recording is pretty reasonable. Considering this was made on Warner's cumbersome old sound on disc equipment, you have to concede that he showed quite some skill. Despite these excuses, it's still a pitiful story.

Because nobody really takes this seriously you can simply enjoy the fun everyone clearly had making this. With a plot where a bunch of armed robbers shoot a guy's girlfriend then that guy instantly falls in love with one of the gang who tried to murder his girlfriend because she looks like the her, how could anyone imagine this was a proper film? .....but gentlemen , if Loretta Young robbed you and was responsible for the attempted murder of the love of your life, wouldn't you fall in love with her? Come on - it's Loretta Young!

Don't let your brain stop you from watching this, just lower your expectation bar to zero and you might just enjoy it.

"Why, she looks more like me than I do myself."

This pre-Coder has not one but two young Loretta Young's, and at age 17 she's as composed and radiant as ever. I wish I could say she was put to good use, but the premise to this one is about as farfetched as they come. Twin sisters have been separated at birth, and one of them has been raised by thieves (but has an honorable streak "a yard wide," to their consternation), and the other has been raised in affluence. The former is persuaded by her "fathers" to help rob from the mansion of the latter one night, after a little surveillance work in disguise as an inspector has resulted in the butler blatantly telling them that they have no burglar alarms. Oh, and did I mention that the twins are psychic too, literally able to read the minds of others if they concentrate and repeat the saying on a little charm they have on their necklace? We find this odd fact out for the crooked sister early on, and while it's unused for the longest time, naturally it will play a crucial role in the story later.

Aside from how ridiculous this is, the investigation which follows when the burglary is botched grinds the film to a crawl, and there are repeated instances of questionable character motivations. The ending is also all tidied up in a way that's most unsatisfying, particularly when you think of the possible directions the story could have taken. Certainly don't watch this if you expect the title to mean anything either, because it doesn't; it's just another example of the studio marketing departments that seemed to work with particular zeal in 1930-31 to find ways of enticing customers to go to the cinema in the early years of the Depression.

The story is at its most interesting in the beginning, when we get little bits like the less well off Young character informing her fathers that she had to leave her job for the same old reason, that her boss had gotten "fresh" with her, calling out harassment in the workplace while at the same time informing us of her virtuousness. We also get a Chinese American waiter saying tersely, without a stereotypical accent, that they don't serve "seagull" in response to a snarky comment. Those are just little tidbits of course, and during the bulk of the film there isn't snappy dialogue, pre-Code naughtiness, or any other little things from the period peppered in which might sustain interest. It's just Loretta Young, who certainly ain't bad, but even fans of hers should keep their expectations low for this film.