Fantasma Amoroso

There were only a very few that gave a review of this film. With the exception of 1 or 2 reviews; the rest were very negative about this film. Not all films need to be serious dramas. Within the comedy genre there are degrees of comedy. For me I generally don't seek out comedies at all. However, merely by accident I saw this movie and stopped to watch it and was not disappointed. Pat O'Brien and Adolphe Menjou, and even Ellen Drew did a fine job with a film that was just merely for fun. For this the cast did deliver.

A few reviews thought and were disappointed because O'Brien was not playing the role of a cop, etc. An actor is an actor and for the most part do not want to be locked in to a certain genre. In this film he was young enough to play this kind a role. If you are looking for a few laughs and some fine acting check this film out I don't think you will be disappointed.

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.

Man Alive (1945)

** (out of 4)

A husband (Pat O'Brien) gets into a fight with his wife (Ellen Drew) when her old flame (Rudy Vallee) comes for a visit. The husband storms off to get drunk and is later that night presumed killed when the car he was riding in crashes into the river. He's actually alive and with the help of a showboat operator (Adolphe Menjou) plans to spy on the wife and torture her because she's about to marry the flame.

MAN ALIVE is played for laughs, although a horror or film noir probably would have made it even better. As is, the film manages to have some mildly interesting moments thanks in large part to the cast but there's no doubt that in the end it's a missed opportunity. The biggest problem is the fact that for a "comedy" there just aren't enough laughs to make it work.

This can be blamed on the screenplay, which was obviously rushed so that they could get anything on the screen. Not only is there a lack of laughs but there are also some very big logical issues that I won't name to prevent spoiling the picture for people. If you're a fan of the cast you might want to check it out but others will probably find very little here to stay entertained on.

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.

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.