The Misleading Lady

By my score of only 2, you can tell that I thought this film was just really stupid and not the hilarious comedy it was meant to be. The plot is, to put it bluntly, just plain dumb and there isn't much to like about this dopey film. This is one of Claudette Colbert's early films...so this might explain how she got hooked into playing in this turkey!

When the film begins, Helen (Claudette Colbert) is trying to convince a producer to cast her in a Broadway play. He refuses so she makes him a bet that makes no sense--if she can get the playboy, Jack Craigen (Edmund Lowe), to fall for her then she can have the part. So, she quickly gets him to fall for her--and in the process makes a total fool of poor Craigen. Now none of this made any sense and wasn't very good....little did I know that it was (by far) the BEST portion of the movie!

Craigen responds to the embarrassment by kidnapping Helen. He takes her to his vacation home...only to discover that an escaped mental patient (Stu Erwin) is running about the place. Soon, Helen's fiancé shows up and a big showdown results.

Stu Erwin's character was one of the worst I can recall having seen in a 1930s film...he was THAT bad. His mentally ill guy was a giant walking stereotype...and a bad one at that. He wore a Napoleonic style hat and declared he was that dead Emperor!! It was just incredibly dumb...and the rest of the film wasn't any better. Simply terrible from start to finish (and especially at the finish!).

It Happened One Night is her best performance but this really isn't far behind.Not only does she look at her best but plays her comic and dramatic scenes quite brilliantly. Plenty of her later comic roles lacked the freshness and sharpness of this 1932 film.Hidden Gem is too often used to describe films but if you are a fan of Colbert ,then you need to watch her performance. The film is not as funny as it could be but it has its moments and is well worth a watch. Edmund Lowe was excellent as the love interest for Colbert.I would go as far to say that his quick wit and comic timing were as good as any leading man I have seen her work with. The worst part of the film is the mad Napoleon character who totally overplays the role and really isn't that funny

This Paramount Pre-Code was the third or fourth time this story had been filmed. Claudette Colbert is an actress trying to land a role in a playwright's unwritten show and to demonstrate she can play a fall-in-love-at-first-sight lead, she tries to make big-game-hunter Edmond Lowe fall in love with her, cutting a record of the event to demonstrate her talents. It works, but when other people find and play the record, Lowe blows up, kidnaps her and takes her to his country house.

They're pretty good for most of the show, but the third act falls apart, as hordes of people (including Will Geer in his first screen role) wander in and out, including the inevitable escapee from an insane asylum who believes he is Napoleon. Perhaps others could have pulled it off, but this cast and crew can't.

What could possibly be better than seeing Claudette Colbert seductively flirting and being outrageously alluring? Much to my dismay, the answer is unfortunately every other film that's ever been made. This is unbelievably awful!

The first fifteen minutes promise so much: Claudette Colbert in a selection of saucy outfits trying to get Edmund Lowe to fall in love with her, for a bet. Then however you think you must have died and found yourself in Hell where Satan has devised his most evil torture yet. I assume it's meant to be a comedy. I assume Stuart Erwin's character - an escapee from the lunatic asylum who thinks he's Napoleon, isn't meant to engender a strong desire to throw a brick through your tv? I assume you're meant to know who the hell all those other guys are? I assume after watching this, you're meant to be able to face watching another picture made in 1932?

But seriously, I was genuinely disappointed in this. It sounded such a fun premise but was executed like a primary school nativity play and clearly written by chimpanzees under the influence of class A narcotics. Absolutely puerile, embarrassingly unfunny humour and by the look of it acted under duress. Edmund Lowe appears to be in shock, as though he's reading those lines under gunpoint. Claudette Colbert looks like she just wants to get this over with as quickly as possible. So, so disappointing - Miss Colbert is one of my all time favourites and to see her in this garbage makes me want to protect her reputation by seeking out and destroying all copies of it.

A predictable love story is enlivened by a dose of pre-code S&M (even light bondage!), and a sexy Claudette Colbert. But the movie suffers from too much "Napoleon" - a bizarre comic relief character who, in the second half, actually gets more screen time than Colbert! That's just not right. ** out of 4.