Courage

For some reason anyone who says a wrong word about this film gets the thumbs down.Well i don't care this film is so creaky that you can positively see the joints ache.The characters seem to be set in a sort of nevernever land which only existed in plays or films.Montgomery is hardly believable as an Englishman,whatever the slight excuses for his accent.Roland Young is totally wasted.Madge Evans seems totally vapid.One reviewer has referred to it as being a "precode"film,but other than the last line i cannot see very much in this that would not have been passed by the censor in 1934.Quite frankly this film is simply not worth watching unless there is absolutely nothing else to do such as watching the grass grow!

ROBERT MONTGOMERY is a wastrel who goes from job to job, finally landing in South Africa where he falls in love with an Admiral's daughter (MADGE EVANS). They meet casually in the shop where he works and for him it's love at first sight. In no time at all they become starry-eyed lovers forced to separate when her wealthy family decides he's the wrong material for a suitor, a struggling playwright who's never had a success.

But they do get together again when she ditches her fiancé (REGINALD OWEN) and returns to Montgomery, offering to marry him. For awhile, it's rough going with no money for food or rent and Evans' father forces Montgomery to give her up and let his daughter return home.

Of course, it all leads toward a happy ending when Montgomery's play based on his real life affair with a wealthy woman becomes a tremendous hit. The dialog is not always as sophisticated as one would like. Evans' last line is: "Let's stay home and have a baby." MADGE EVANS was one of the most attractive blondes of the '30s and gives a sincere performance. Montgomery is first rate as her troubled husband.

Summing up: The material has been done before, over and over again, and more successfully than here where it gets the cornball treatment.

The story begins when Willie Smith is a child. He has no interest in school or a career and is a dreamer. This is made worse by very inconsistent parenting--with the father trying to be strict and the mother coddling the boy. Years pass....and Willie has been bouncing about the world doing various jobs and getting fired from them. One reviewer described him as a wastrel...and this isn't far from the truth.

Later, Willie meets a woman whose station is well above him. She is the daughter of an admiral and he's about to lose yet another job. On impulse, she insists he marry her....which common sense would say is not a great idea. Can they manage to make a go of it....especially since his job prospects are minimal? And, if they do marry, what next?

This is only a fair film. I think part of it is the plot but to me the bigger problem is the dialog. It all seems to dreadfully earnest and artificial...like a play and not real life. Not terrible but clearly among Robert Montgomery and Madge Evans' lesser work.

This screen adaptation of a play by Frederick Lonsdale about a young man who has spent his life wandering about the globe, collecting experience so he can become a playwright -- Robert Montgomery -- and the young aristocrat who marries him and is disinherited for her taking up with a wastrel - Madge Evans -- creaks pretty badly as it goes through its predictable plot twists. Director Robert Z. Leonard and the unnamed screenwriters make some effort at opening up the script, but still wind up having the leads conduct most of their earnest dialogue in two-shots. Also, frankly, Robert Montgomery is miscast. He never quite managed to do accents convincingly and he seems overwhelmed, although he carries out his self-effacing courtship of Miss Evans most charmingly.

Nor do most of the other actors manage to be more than straw men. The two exceptions are -- unsurprisingly -- Beryl Mercer, who made a specialty in kindly, clueless mothers -- her best known role was Lew Ayres' mother in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT -- and the always delightful Roland Young, who gets to play someone with brains and heart, who comes up with most of the plot twists here.

All in all, not a movie to search out unless you are a fanatic for any of the personnel involved.

When Halliwell Hobbes describes his and Beryl Mercer's son as a wastrel sad to say he was proved right. The son who grows up to be played by Robert Montgomery is just that. It's a term of the century before the last and more used in the United Kingdom than here. I wish it was in more usage now because it describes many that I've known.

Those people also don't have the good luck to have a happy ending fall from right out of the blue as is in Lovers Courageous. We get to see a bit of Montgomery's life going from place to place and occupation to occupation never 'finding himself'. Eventually he meets and charms Madge Evans in South Africa, daughter of British admiral Frederick Kerr. They marry without his approval and live a life of not so genteel poverty.

I've known a few in my life so that this kind of movie about a wastrel won't find a friendly audience with me. Nevertheless the cast does a fine job.

But I doubt you'll believe the ending either.