Good Girls Go to Paris

It's hard to watch this movie and not be reminded of another movie Columbia made 5 years before, It Happened One Night. Once again Walter Connolly plays the father - or here, actually, grandfather - of a group of spoiled young adults who don't hesitate to make a mess of their and others' lives until an outsider - here, Melvyn Douglas - enters their world and brings them to their senses. As much as I enjoy his performances, Douglas was no Clark Gable, nor, as much as I enjoy her performances, was Joan Blondell another Claudette Colbert. Nor is the script as good, by a long shot. Still, it's often fun to watch. Yet another example of "the foibles of the young and spoiled," of which "It Happened...," "The Philadelphia Story," and "My Man Godfrey" are all better examples.

...and dull rom coms like this go into the vault until or unless they are exhumed by TCM for god knows what esoteric reason. Just a hymn to the un funny with, as a previous reviewer noted, a too old Joan Blondell (at least too old to be playing a college town lunchroom waitress) and a too somber Melvyn Douglas with, as another previous reviewer noted, zero chem with Joanie. Throw in the usual trying too hard performance of Walter Connolly, dialogue that is at best half ass "Philadelphia Story", and a director who is clearly uncomfortable or unfamiliar with physical comedy of any sort and you can see why this thing is best forgotten. Solid C.

PS...Googled Joan Perry, who played Silvia. Saw that she survived marriage to both Harry Cohn and Laurence Harvey. Now there's a movie I'd like to watch.

Joan Blondell saved many a movie. Here, as the star, she tries hard, but she is given lines which change her character from minute to minute. The lines are seldom funny. She was always at her best, both early and late in her career, as the brassy city broad, cynical, but with a heart of gold. She doesn't have this kind of role here. Her gold digging ambitions are out of character and are only a minor plot device. Melvin Douglas is Melvin Douglas, urbane, sophisticated, with a dry wit, but no witty lines at all. Walter Connelly, as usual, shouts his lines, but none of them are funny.

The good films of this type seem effortlessly written and performed. This kind of film shows, by its failures, just how great an effort those good films required.

This is not a well crafted or written piece of cinema. I have been arbitrarily watching comedies from this era of late largely to stick my head in the sand from the horrors of the world at the moment. This film could easily be remade with some updates to the increasing gender equality in the world. The setup was unusually clever for one of these early romantic comedies, the characters were fun, some even had a bit of depth. Joan Blondell is utterly charming and her Jenny Swanson is the original Manic Pixie Dreamgirl, it is delightful fluff entertainment. The whole web of mistaken identity was probably clever for the time and a nod to A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Special appreciation to Walter Connolly's performance, his cartoonish exasperation and chemistry with Blondell were some of the best moments in the film. The actors are genuinely enjoying themselves.

Is the writing silly, sure, the dialog a bit basic, absolutely, but holy crap I enjoyed this ever so much more than anything I've seen in awhile.

The movie is a good screw ball comedy, thanks mainly to Joan, playing a naive girl, with starry eyes.

The star she is looking for, is a rich boy, to be black-mailed, or rather it is his rich father, to get rid of a mesalliance, so that she can go to Paris with the money, as she had been reading in the Page-3 of the gossip columns, almost every other day, as she averred.

There are only two obstructions in her being able to execute the plan, the father-confessor : Exchange Professor Ronald, and her own conscience (the flutter).

Though one of the reviews compares it with the It Happened One Night.. but I don't find much similarity, neither with the Cinderella stories... since the black-mailer knew the Prince (and hence made him target) and the Prince, in fact more than one Prince, too knew that she is out to milk them (she had told that herself to them - and in fact to a train-load of passengers).

The innocent and naive role Joan could pull it brilliantly through, and that along with two ever solid performers, Melvyn and Connolly carried the movie on their shoulders. A bit of not-unmentionable part is by Alan Curtis, but except them all other, including the director or rather the story-writer, did their best to spoil it.

Isabel Jeans tried to be some sort of Billy Burke or Alice Brady (in My Man Godfrey) - with a closet Toy Boy - though not too believably, and going overboard in trying to act the type of silly woman, which Billy Burke does well. The Toy-Boy, had his own designs (though he too didn't look too convincing), nor did the first victim Stanley Brown - he was guilty (having written love-letters), but didn't look to be so when charged. His domineering father Clarence Kolb did carry his small part.

But the worst were the trio of Joan Perry (Sylvia, Ronald's betrothed), Henry Hunter (Dennis, Butler's son and Sylvia's lover) and Hickman (the butler). That was a completely hay-ware plot. About to marry Ronald, Sylvia spending nights, daily as the detective said, with Dennis. We can blame it on social morals, but what of the Butler's son and the Butler ? Not they too, certainly. And that wasn't in closet, everyone except the Groom (Melvyn) and Grandpa (Connolly) knew of it.

The behavior of these two lovers was not too explainable- even more during the accident and the aftermath. Sylvia bribed Jenny in taking the blame, but then in the confrontation, she not only told that she had blocked the cheque but also egged Jenny- almost daring her to tell the truth (though Jenny didn't) and then the complete spineless (and Coward, as Jenny told him on face, and rightly so), Dennis can't be the right one for wayward Sylvia, as the Butler father Jeffers said, nor would have the wise Grandpa agreed to the opinion.

Had these four characters (Sylvia, Dennis, Jeffers and Caroline) been better thought of, it could have been a far better movie than it is.

But still, it is entirely watchable, due to brilliance of Blondell.