Adventure in Manhattan

Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur have an "Adventure in Manhattan" in this 1936 film, also starring Thomas Mitchell and Reginald Owen, and directed by Edward Ludwig.

McCrea plays a sharp criminal reporter who is convinced that a world-famous thief, believed dead, is actually very much alive and responsible for some big heists that have taken place. He meets Arthur, a young actress, and the two fall in love as McCrea tries to prove his theory.

This is a really enjoyable film, with delightful performances by McCrea and Arthur. It's a bit all over the place - part screwball, part mystery. I frankly didn't see much of Nick and Nora Charles in it as others have. But the dialogue is bright, McCrea and Arthur have good chemistry, and some aspects of the mystery are good. McCrea is often thought of as sort of a poor man's Gary Cooper: a handsome, hunky all-American. In westerns there is more of a similarity, with Cooper having more gravitas, but McCrea's lighter touch and more overt personality lent themselves well to comedy. That's where he and Cooper parted company.

Enjoyable, and with a better script, it would have been terrific.

Joel McCrea gets robbed of his wallet by some weird blonde, who proves to be mixed up with the theatre business, while he is a controversial journalist who is famous for presenting predictions that come true. It's a screwball comedy with straight and witty dialog all the way getting smarter all the time, as the plot gradually thickens, and a great bank robbery is synchronized with a great premiere of a first world war drama with reckless gunfire, bombs, explosions and plenty of smoke, and for some reason Jean Arthur gets the hang of it. She is brilliant, and so is Joel McCrea, they work splendidly together as an odd couple in constant arguments with each other about their incurable differtences, but it's a comedy - nothing to worry about.

It could have been a good, tough crime heist film without those comedy lines. A true excellent bank heist, through a tunnel, not an armed robbery plot. But Edward Ludwig, whose speciality will be adventure movies - CARIBBEAN, JIVARO, SANGAREE - Ed Ludwig missed the opportunity to give us a good film noir. He did it with THE LAST GANGSTER though, starring Edward G Robinson, for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, not a real tough and gritty noir either, but still good. So, back to this one, even the Joel McCrea's presence doesn't save the whole for me. Just entertaining, fun, yes, but with such crime ingredients, it could have been different and better. As if you decided to prepare an excellent dish, with the adequate ingredients choice and quantity, but with the wrong cooking time on the cooker or in the oven.

An overly confident crime reporter (JOEL McCREA) and a clever actress (JEAN ARTHUR) must match wits against an even more clever art thief (REGINALD OWEN) who poses as a theatrical producer to cover his real proclivities as a thief. His theater is staging a play with heavy military artillery to disguise the noise of his thieves blasting a tunnel into the bank.

Some crisp dialog and some nice performances aren't enough to conceal that this is pretty flimsy material. Still, it does manage to show that both McCrea and Arthur had a natural flair for light material tinged with a hint of mystery.

Unfortunately, the script involving stolen art work and the attempted theft of the Sunburst Diamond from a bank vault, doesn't permit either one to create more than one-dimensional characters and after an original start, the story runs out of wacky ideas and turns serious before it reverts to comedy again.

McCrea and Arthur play their roles as though they were imitating the Nick and Nora Charles brand of humor in comedy with mystery. With stronger material, this would have worked. THOMAS MITCHELL is good as a newspaper man who fires and hires McCrea in moments of great exasperation.

It's light stuff and highly forgettable except for the charm of the two stars.

I have long admired Jean Arthur, so when I came across one of her films I did not know I naturally jumped at the chance to watch it. I did not even bother to read any of the reviews here or elsewhere in advance. As it turns out, that was probably the right decision: Some of these reviews might have prejudiced me against this near-perfect 1930s comedy. The plot is too convoluted to summarise here, but director Edward Ludwig manages to present it in a way that makes every twist and turn, however zany, look plausible (at least for the moment). He also gives 'Adventure in Manhattan' great tempo and pace: there is never a dull moment, and many moments that are simply hilarious. Joel McCrea plays a criminologist with a Sherlock Holmes-like ability to put himself in a master-thief's position and to second-guess the thief's plans. As his predictions come true he is so full of himself that one failure is truly devastating. Jean Arthur is great as an actress who thinks he is nuisance but eventually falls in love with him. The dialogues are spot on: sharp and witty. In sum, this is as nice a comedy as you will find: don't believe the reviewers who jumped on the bandwagon talking it down!