El fantasma amoroso

Pat O'Brien has been married to Ellen Drew since they graduated from college. When her previous boyfriend, Rudy Vallee shows up, O'Brien is jealous, goes out on a tear, and hooks up with perpetual drunk Jack Norton. Somehow they switch clothes, and Norton is killed and O'Brien winds up on Adolphe Menjou's showboat. When O'Brien is declared dead, Menjou persuades him into various shenanigans to reintroduce himself gradually to Miss Drew.

O'Brien drew this assignment as the first of his five-picture contract with RKO. He certainly seems willing enough to try anything, but his matter-of-fact delivery does not mix well with the increasing hysteria of the situations he gets into, as he impersonates a ghost, his uncle from Ireland, and eventually an amnesiac.

It's one of those comedies that doesn't bear much thinking about. Instead, the thing to do is to enjoy Menjou, his speed and grace as a confident confidence man, fast-talking O'Brien into these dumb ideas. In many ways the energy is that of the first screen version of The Front Page, in which Menjou played Walter Burns and O'Brien Hildy Johnson.

Speed McBride (Pat O'Brien) is not happy with his wife, Connie. An old boyfriend (Rudy Vallee) is in town and she is gaga about the guy. What's worse, when Speed asks Connie, she says she isn't sure whether she's STILL in love with the old boyfriend or not! As a result, Speed goes off on a bender and through some impossible to believe circumstances, he's assumed to have been killed driving while drunk. However, he's completely alive. Instead of just revealing to everyone he's really alive, he lets a guy he just met (Adolph Menjou) convince him to pretend he's dead. What's more, although he doesn't know the guy at all, he then follows his wacky plan to return home as a ghost to teach his wife a lesson. If you think that this sounds like a bad sitcom plot...well, you are pretty much catching on to the plot. And, if you think it can't get much stupider...well, you're wrong!

This is a dumb movie. Enjoyable in a brainless sort of way but clearly a film that must have embarrassed the cast and which they sooner would have forgotten. Watchable but awful.

By the way, I noticed one reviewer seemed shocked that Pat O'Brien actually starred in this film--implying he was only a supporting actor. Well, he almost exclusively starred in films and generally was NOT a supporting actor...in case you were wondering.

Sure It's A Stretch! But it's still funny. It even has a pratfall.

Adolphe Menjou plays a mischievous rogue and Pat O'Brien plays himself as always. They meet after Pat's supposed death and Adolphe takes control of the situation with wacky results.

As Menjou says, "What a Magnificent Mess!" It starts out slow but it picks up with increasing momentum until you wish it could slow down. But it can't.

It's a house of card built upon shifting sands. Situations are extremely contrived but it makes for a delightfully wild ride.

I wanted to write this review because there were only 2 reviews, both somewhat negative. Pat O'Brien does not always have to play a cop. He may always be Pat O'Brien, but he fits into this role very plausibly. He is, after all, pulling a fast one, and no one can pull a fast one like Pat O'Brien.

In any case, Adolphe Menjou steals this movie away from him. Adolphe is a very versatile actor and he is one of the few that could pull of his role with any kind of believability.

Good set-up for a farce. O'Brien fights with wife who is conflicted by appearance of old college flame Vallee, O'Brien gets drunk with Norton (filmdom's once-famous drunk-comic) and they drive into the bay. Norton killed, but O'Brien alive (wearing Norton's jacket) and fished out by showboat proprietors, including ship hand Menjou. O'Brien wakes up thinking he's dead because Menjou is wearing devil's costume (for stage show) while stoking coal into the ship's furnace! When he tries to get back to his wife, O'Brien is urged by kibitzer Menjou to act as a ghost to find out if her love for him is real or if she's actually in love with Vallee. So far so good, and done with a fairly light touch, then the rest of the film devolves into a frantic hard-breathing comic muddle. Too bad the writers ran out of ideas. We even see Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer pop-up as the cross-eyed long-lost son of Norton, thinking O'Brien is his dad. But nothing works comically or romantically after the set-up.

I knew that something was amiss. Pat O'Brien, in a leading role? No gangsters? Not a police officer. Really!

Here he stars in this pure stinker as a husband who loves his wife but forgets her birthday. The wife, played by Ellen Drew, looked so much like Eve Arden in many scenes.

How coincidental that as he forgot her birthday, her divorced friend from college, enters the movie. Played by Rudy Valee, the guy wants Drew.

O'Brien storms out of the house and to the local bar. There he meets a poor drunkard chap, both get plastered, exchange clothes and papers and go on a drunken ride, ending in death for the other guy and total confusion for the rest of the film.

The film basically becomes slapstick. O'Brien lands on a riverboat and meets Adolph Menjou, who convinces him to act like a ghost.

The two return to the house just as the will is being read. When O'Brien told Drew to continue her life, Valee immediately proposes marriage. O'Brien acts as the ghost to "terrorize" Drew and mayhem and general wackiness ensues.

Rate this *1/2 and be off.