I enjoyed this so much I'm going to watch it again.
This is not something I ever thought I'd hear myself say but Basil Rathbone is hilarious! Neither can I believe that I actually laughed out loud at something written in the 1920s!
This is that rarest of things: a filmed stage play that's actually a proper film. So many early talkies look like they were made by someone just nailing a camera to the end of a stage, telling everyone to speak really slowly and hoping for the best. The acting is usually theatrical and stagey with the staging being static and stilted. But no, not in this; they do the impossible - take a stage play, keep the structure but make it into a genuine picture. Its style is very old fashioned but that just adds to its old world charm.
If you like a good old fashioned farce, whether it's The Aldwych Farces, Don't Just Lie There or the Carry On films, this should appeal to you. I'm genuinely surprised just how funny this is. Apart from The Marx Brothers, some Eddie Cantor and a handful of Laurel and Hardy films, I find a lot of American comedies from this era loud and crass and apparently made for simpletons. This isn't particularly classy and is hardly sophisticated but has a weirdly modern sense of humour. Acting, pace, presentation, dialogue and story are just right. Until ARSENIC AND OLD LACE came along over a decade later, I don't think I've ever seen a stage play so skilfully transformed into a motion picture.
There's none of that unnatural theatrical acting style here, except for comic effect. A lot of the characters are over the top caricatures as you'd expect in a comedy but everyone acts and talks like real people....sort of....it is still 1930 after all. As I said, Basil Rathbone, perhaps because you don't usually associate him with comedy is brilliant but so is Yorkshire lass, Dorothy Mackaill who has real comic timing. She made the transition absolutely seamless from silent acting style to acting in the talkies. You could imagine her in any modern drama or sit-com. She's also very pretty and without flaunting herself at all, she somehow exudes a sweet understated sensuality - and she's such a cute smile!
OK, this is not a classic, it's probably not in anyone's all time top ten but now it's definitely going into my top fifty. Well made, well acted and great fun.
