Road to Paradise

Road to Paradise (1930)

** (out of 4)

Incredibly far fetched drama about a young woman (Loretta Young) who helps two criminals rob from her look alike. This is certainly a film you'd have to see to believe because the story is so far fetched that you can never take it serious. The screenwriter made the mistake of making this a drama when it probably would have worked better as a screwball comedy. The ending is so out there you can't help but laugh when it's supposed to be dramatic. Young gives a good performance in her duel role but the rest of the cast is pretty dull. Directed by William Beaudine.

There is nothing of highways or of heaven in this film, so I don't know why it was named as it was. Loretta Young plays a foundling raised by a couple of thieves who decide to rob rich girl Margaret Waring, who looks just like Loretta's character, Mary Brennan, trading on the fact that the two are physically identical. Unfortunately once inside the rich girl's darkened mansion things begin to go awry. The rich girl's boyfriend shows up (Jack Mulhall) and Mary must make him believe she is the real thing - she does all too good a job of it. Then the real Margaret Waring reappears at the house unexpectedly, there's a shooting, Mary's accomplices desert her, and the police arrive at the scene to find two Margaret Warings, one of whom is unconscious.

So what's goofy about the plot besides what I've mentioned? Well, there's a rather far-fetched mind reading plot device that figures heavily into matters, the fact that the police are examining every tree for evidence yet manage to miss the forest, and that Jack Mulhall's character can fall in love based on three sentences from someone who is - at the time - just trying to get rid of him.

The whole thing is a rather suspenseful yet fun mystery/comedy of errors. It really is one of Warner's better early talkie efforts. What's really amazing here is that Loretta Young was only 17 when she made this one yet she can hold her own with any of the older leading actresses of the day that made such drawing room dramas.

"Road to Paradise" is a 1930 film starring Loretta Young in a dual role.

Mary Brennan is a lovely young woman who is in with thieves who raised her. One night at a Chinese restaurant, they all spot her lookalike, Margaret Waring, who is very wealthy. The cons decide to go to her house while she's out, using Mary as her double, and rip her off. Of course, things don't go off without a couple of hitches.

This film, even though it's short, seems long as it moves slowly. It's a very early sound movie, and the actors hadn't yet perfected the speech rhythms.

Loretta Young is luminously beautiful - here, she's about 17 years old. She does a wonderful job of differentiating between the two women as well. Worth seeing for her, not much else.

"I could never understand this desire for respectability. It always seemed kind of morbid to me."

So says one of two crooks who raised respectable, honest "Mary Brennan" (Loretta Young) as an orphan girl and can't understand where they went wrong in raising her! Poor Mary, though, winds up out of work and needs something, and winds up joining these guys in a scheme after they discover has an amazing twin, a rich woman named "Margaret Waring" (Young, playing two roles in this movie). These guys also discover that Mary has amazing mind-reading talents.

This movie turned out to be disappointing because it got more and more ludicrous as it went on. I found the last 25 minutes extremely frustrating and an insult to anyone's intelligence. There are so many holes in this story it would make your head spin. It reminded me of the old Superman TV series, with one thing after another that had no credibility. Unlike Superman, which was fun to watch for a number of reasons, there was only one thing to keep my interest here: a young and beautiful Young.

However, after admiring her looks for about a half hour, I needed the story to make some sense and keep my interest....and this made NO sense. Also, "Mary," who was supposed to be so honest, lied throughout the film. I wonder how Loretta viewed this role in latter years.

Drama, or maybe it's a comedy, I couldn't really tell, has Loretta Young as a down-on-her-luck urbanite with two crook pals, who stumbles on her wealthy absolute lookalike at a speakeasy, where the trio contrive to rob her. From there it's ludicrousness upon ludicrousness, with poor Loretta also being telepathic (she's able to intuit the safe combination out of the other, unconscious Loretta), escapes and coincidences that would never happen, and a finale that reveals why the two Lorettas look so alike... can you guess? Her leading man, Jack Mulhall, is dullsville, and our loyalties are confused; if poor Loretta is engineering a jewel robbery, how on her side can we be? The double exposures involving the two Lorettas are reasonably well faked, and it's over mercifully fast. What this has to do with any road to paradise, I'm stumped.