Dreadfully Boring

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Howard Hawks' emblematic screwball comedy germinates from the wheeze of Billy Wilder when the latter was still in Germany, it is the quintessential coupling of the pedantic and the sultry, Gary Cooper plays Prof. Bertram Potts, a grammarian who is leading a group of eight scholars compiling and collating an encyclopedia, when a sultry nightclub performer Sugarpuss O'Shea (Stanwyck) takes shelter in their residence in NYC, who indeed is the gun moll of mob boss Joe Lilac (Andrews), the rest is written in the stone although it takes a tortuous route to reach its feel-good finish line. Less loquacious and rapid-fire than Howard's BRINGING UP BABY (1938), BALL OF FIRE points up the mine of vernacular in lieu of verbal rebuttal between the opposite sexes, it is during Prof. Potts' field trip to collect current lexicon of slang when he is swept off his feet by a bling-bling Sugarpuss, performing DRUM BOOGIE with Gene Krupa and his orchestra, accentuated by the bandleader's killing drum solo and an ingenious miniature encore with matches. They are two different kettles of fish, a stuffy bachelor vs. a pragmatic siren, a mismatch rarely can make their way out in real life, and that's what enthralls even today's audience, to watch something profoundly absurd but innocuously entertaining without its story being dumb-ed down or defamed by crass jokes pandering to the lowest common denominator is almost too good to be true.Also, the star appeal is in high voltage, Cooper is not just a too handsome specimen in a button- down suit, he also makes the shtick of doing everything with proprieties look effortless and goofy; an Oscar-nominated Stanwyck benefits from an earthier temperament and layers of inner conflicts deviled by her sapio-sexual conversion, is at her best when she retains her phlegm before impishly doling out her "yum yum" to a gawky virgin, which catches him unawares. Another fount of joy comes from the riff on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as the other 7 professors grows an unanimous affinity to Sugarpuss, to the dismay of the stern housemaid Miss Bragg (Howard), and among them, the only widower is the botanist Prof. Oddly, Richard Haydn brings about a love-ably prissy mannerism that steals the limelight in the well-orchestrated crunch when the group has to outmaneuver Joe's two pistol-wielding henchmen.In short, considerably more accessible and more laid-back than BRINGING UP BABY, BALL OF FIRE excels in conflating different genre fodder (comedy, musical, gangster) into a helluva ride of a modern fairy-tale, and runs away with our affection on a moment's notice.

An eccentric, out-of-this-world group of scientists have been working for nine years now on a huge encyclopedia which is supposed to be complete and entirely up-to-date; until the youngest of them, Professor Potts, the philologist, after a short talk with the garbage man finds out that his article about slang is COMPLETELY outdated - because he used old books about the slang words of the last generations instead of listening to today's real-life people... And that's exactly what he decides to do: to leave their secluded study for once, to go out and gather new slang words and people who are liable to know a LOT more of them - and one of them is nightclub singer Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck); and very soon he becomes not only romantically involved with her, but also PRETTY unromantically with her gangster friends...One of the very FOREMOST examples of the classic screwball comedy, this movie is a perfect example for its genre from the first to the last minute; directing and writing are 'super-duper', as Professor Potts' helpers from the street would say - and the performances, EVERY single one of them, are simply outstanding: Cooper and Stanwyck, the mobsters with Dana Andrews and Dan Duryea as leaders, and of course the lovable elderly professors who are so much wrapped up with their work - until Sugarpuss brings a breath of fresh air into their lives! This is certainly one of the movies that everybody can watch over and over again without ever getting tired of it - and it's one of the most IDEAL movies for the purpose of bringing classic black-and-white movies which today's kids find 'old-fashioned' closer to them and awake an interest in classic cinema in them; a great masterpiece of comedy that will get generations to come to die laughing!!

This story takes its viewers back to the days before advanced technology, back to the time when research came from slaving over dusty old volumes for hours on end. Eight peculiar professors spend nine years doing just that, fulfilling one deceased man's dream of compiling an exceptional encyclopedia. Absorbed by academia, they are unaware of the perks of street life until the handsome, yet naïve Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) ventures out to research his article on slang. Opting to observe city life and its specimens, he invites an array of characters to the foundation to assist him in studying art of slang.His subject of interest for the project is the feisty Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck). The girlfriend of mob boss Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews), she uses the foundation to escape entanglement in Joe's murder charges. Almost immediately, she brings life to the foundation and its occupants. The clashing of the academic world with city life takes the viewers along for a ride of laughter, thrills, and more laughter. Gary Cooper did a fantastic job playing an egghead. His performance is charming and won my heart in more than one scene. Barbara Stanwyck portrayed the selfish club singer using others for her advantage, but she eventually softens. The real delights of the film were the seven elderly professors, particularly Richard Haydn whose comical one-liners and stuff-shirt demeanor keeps one laughing hysterically.This movie was by far one of the best I have seen for a long time, cleverly combining elements of comedy, romance, and drama.

I had heard so much about Ball of Fire, with people saying how wonderful it was. After finally seeing it, I really have nothing other than to echo these sentiments. The film looks wonderful, the costumes and settings look lovely and the cinematography doesn't look at all dated. The music is jaunty with an endearing touch of romanticism, the story is an updated version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and a scintillating one it is too, Wilder's direction is spot-on and the screenplay is witty and hysterically funny. I loved the performances too, Gary Cooper is gawky and very lovable and Barbara Stanwyk is alluring with a genuine sense of comic timing. Henry Travers, Richard Haydn and Dana Andrews are wonderful in support. Oh and fans of Stanwyk will get a treat from her performance of Drum Boogie with percussion king Gene Krupa. Overall, a great movie if there ever was one. 10/10 Bethany Cox