Though the older brother, Lionel was always the lesser of the Barrymores. John got all the sex appeal, and Lionel was always (at least in films) the dear old curmudgeon who wouldn't hurt a flea, the doting grandpa, the feisty but cute old man. In other words, as Sheridan Whiteside said, "Excuse me while I vomit." However, in this movie, Lionel actually acts rather than overacts for once (though he still can't keep his hands away from his lapels). True, the script gives him too many speeches, and there is too much hoke in them (God, Washington at Valley Forge). But there is a real performance here as the angry old man and the old fool who should have known better--a wholehearted one.
Lionel falls into the web of Karen Morley, a money-mad vamp in a transparent sequinned negligee who carries a torch for her absent boyfriend, Nils Asther (not VERY convincing as a wild Romeo), who turns up again. For her he throws away the Senate seat from which he was going to spearhead a drive to nationalize the energy industries--a radical policy even today (sadly).
It's hard to believe that such a fire-breathing populist as Lionel would fall so hard for a superficial, deceitful woman, and it's disappointing that he succumbs to her rather than to the machinations of politics and big business. But what is unusual about the movie is that the latter are shown in such detail, and with such contempt for the average American. This was a time of tremendous upheaval and uncertainty in America, and if the movie falls victim to that, it does give us a sense of the national malaise.
