Lua de Mel para Três

I've never understood the success of George Brent. He seems so uninteresting in most of the movies with him that I've seen. He is particularly uncharismatic in screwball comedy, which is what this movie is trying to be.

But there are lots of things that don't really work here. Ann Sheridan, who would give a spectacular performance the next year in The Man who Came to Dinner, never takes off here.

Is it the director? Lloyd Bacon made lots of good movies. Is it his fault this one just never catches fire? I don't have an answer.

This movie has some real talent in it, but it goes nowhere.

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I watched this movie again tonight, four years after I wrote the review above. I think I must have been in a bad mood then, because I enjoyed it much more now.

The real genius here is the script, which has some wonderful lines. Director Lloyd Bacon does keep things moving at a rapid pace. Ann Sheridan, as others have noted, is attractive, though no where nearly as stunning as in The Man Who Came to Dinner, which I watched again last night for the nth time - and loved from start to finish yet once again.

There are weak points here, clichés and filler. But at its best, it really is a zippy comedy.

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I watched it again tonight - not recognizing it until well into the movie, I'm embarrassed to report - and this time found it pleasant but unremarkable. I keep watching Ann Sheridan movies because she is so good in *The Man who came to Dinner*, but that really seems to have been a one-off gem for her. What a shame.

Perhaps with a brighter script they would have managed not to look so silly, but GEORGE BRENT and ANN SHERIDAN can't redeem HONEYMOON FOR THREE no matter how hard they try. The script puts them through impossible to believe situations, the main one being why Brent (with an eye for the gals) bats his eyes at anyone else when Ann Sheridan is around. Sheridan is at her absolute physical peak and manages to deliver some sassy lines with her usual pep and appeal.

But nothing really helps, not even though the script is by Julius J. Epstein who has done some wonderful work at Warner Bros. elsewhere. And even a good supporting cast tries gamely to make the thing work, with a few chuckles at most as reward for their hard work--people like CHARLIE RUGGLES, JANE WYMAN, OSA MASSEN, WALTER CATLETT and WILLIAM T. ORR.

Brent at least shows more animation than usual in a comedy role. He and Sheridan married a couple of years later, so there should have been more chemistry between them for this feeble screwball comedy that has Sheridan as his neglected secretary who has to cope with his roving eye on one too many occasions. A highlight of the film is a dinner scene in a restaurant, but, alas, the trouble with the film is that the sum is a lot less than a few stray scenes.

Summing up: Strains too hard but misses by a wide margin.

George Brent and his future wife Ann Sheridan star in "Honeymoon for Three," a 1941 film, featuring Osa Massen, Charles Ruggles, Jane Wyman, and William T. Orr (who became a very big producer for Warner Bros.).

Brent is Kenneth Bixby, a best-selling author of a new book, Miriam, who is traveling with his secretary Anne Rogers (Ann Sheridan), whom he wants to marry, on a book tour.

While in Cleveland, he is accosted by his college sweetheart Julie (Massen), who wants him back and believes she is the Miriam of his book. She is currently married to Harvey Wilson (Ruggles).

An attorney, Arthur, and his fiancée Elizabeth, don't want a scandal in the Wilson family and want Bixby and Julie kept apart. Wilson, meanwhile, has been hearing about Bixby for years and wants to see him, so he shows up at Bixby's suite. Anne is furious, Julie wants a divorce, and Wilson wants Bixby to marry Julie so that he can be rid of her.

Mildly funny comedy and a routine one. Everyone is commenting on George Brent's comedy expertise. I actually didn't get that. He held his own, certainly, but this was more of a Cary Grant role.

I frankly think Errol Flynn, though he wasn't known for it, was better at comedy than Brent. Also, it stretched credibility that Brent was in college ten years earlier with Massen.

Ann Sheridan is in her milieu here and adds a lot of spark to the film. She also looks wonderful and does a great rumba. Jane Wyman, alas, has a very small role.

There is a scene where Brent is having dinner with Massen on one side of the restaurant and Sheridan, Ruggles, Westlake, and Wyman on the other side, with the same waiter for both tables, who believes he is going crazy. That scene is good but could have been much better.

Pleasant.

Who would ever think that amiable, but rather wooden, George Brent could have a deft comedic touch? In this, as a put-upon author, he is terrific, engagingly silly, with great timing. Maybe it is the truly snappy dialogue by the Epstein brothers, who worked on so many great Warners films, including Casablanca. Or maybe it was playing opposite Ann Sheridan (a year or so after the movie was made the two were married for a year). As Brent's long-suffering secretary, Sheridan also shines, as she did in most of her films, and is absolutely gorgeous as well. The film is fast-paced farce, with a double-dinner restaurant scene that is positively manic. If you ever get a chance to see this movie, grab it. It will leave you smiling.

An interesting cast tries to keep this comedy afloat and on course, but the story is riddled with inconsistencies and irrelevancies. The plot is preposterous.

Author Kenneth Bixby (George Brent) has just become engaged to his secretary Anne Rogers (Ann Sheridan), when a former flame shows up. He does not even remember her at first, but for some reason he seems determined to sneak off with the nutty woman, even after discovering she is married. Then the slighted husband shows up and a flock of attorneys starts hovering, looking for lucrative lawsuits.

Brent plays it for screwball, as do most of the cast. Sheridan, though, is pragmatic, sarcastic, and sophisticated. She holds the entire production together. This beauty's career was too short and underappreciated. Without Ann Sheridan, this film would have been a noisy, noxious mess. As it is, it deserves watching; just don't expect "The Philadelphia Story". Besides, this story takes place in Cleveland.