everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Absolutely Fantastic

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The plot elements of this movie, in my mind, take second place to the repartee, or verbal fencing, that takes place among various characters. One character is always needling another; each tries to top the others in snarky insults. I suppose this is where the "comedy" label comes from.For instance, there's the repartee among the various reporters on Robert Armstrong's newspaper. Cupid Ainsworth (a large fat woman) comes in, saying she's late because "I couldn't find a cab." Armstrong responds, "You mean you couldn't find one to fit you." Ainsworth gives as good as she gets, however. When Armstrong comes back into the office after being bawled out by his wife, she says, "Well, well, well! Here comes the lion with the lamb's haircut!" (Ainsworth gives a very memorable performance in this movie, in my opinion.) When Armstrong goes into the editor's office to get bawled out, Ainsworth cries, "Hold on boys, we're going around a curve!" (To me, that was better than Bette Davis' famous line, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!") Tom Kennedy is in the movie, playing a cop. (I always think of Kennedy as Gahagan, from the Torchy Blane movies.) Armstrong refers to Kennedy as "Flatfoot," and he growls, "Lay off the puppies!" Armstrong and his even-more-drunken buddy get into a battle of wits in a speakeasy with members of a drug-dealing gang. Armstrong says, "I recently heard of two hop-slingers who were punished by being put in a barrel with a skunk. Fortunately, the skunk died." His buddy responds, "He was probably bored to death by their repartee." I think this movie has a quite adult sensibility as regards inter-personal relationships and conversation. (Adult meaning "adult," not "dirty.") It's not a Pollyanna or Hollywood sensibility -- there's friction and oneupmanship among various characters. That makes a refreshing change. Kennedy's cop role is also more adult than his slapstick-ish Gahagan roles. I like the whole tone and atmosphere of this movie.I always enjoy seeing Armstrong, who is perhaps best known as the impresario who brought King Kong back from his island. He was a quite prolific actor, and always interesting.George ("Gabby") Hayes is also here briefly, and I'm always fascinated to see him in a movie, beardless and in an adult, not slapstick-ish role.In the end, the murder is pinned on the actual perpetrator (yay!), and Armstrong and his wife are reconciled. I like a movie with a happy ending, and to see justice is done.This movie, to me, is enjoyable, adult, and fun every time I see it.

Even though Carole Lombard was steadily catching the public's eye and picking up good notices she realised there was no long term future for her at Pathe. They were too busy grooming Ann Harding and Constance Bennett into stars and from the look of 1929 it seemed as though she and Robert Armstrong were going to be developed into a team!! Fortunately by the next year she was at Paramount and destined for better things.I don't think there would have been much incitement to seriously portray the effects of alcoholism at the height of prohibition - and with Robert Armstrong as the star there were going to be just as many laughs and wisecracks as serious moments. But no one told Carole and, surprisingly, she gives the film it's thoughtfulness.This is a "Battle of the Sexes" between husband and wife, "rival reporters" Margaret and Steve Banks - Margaret is the dedicated reporter of the Morning Herald who has just scooped her husband out of a "love nest, chorus girl, dope ring" story, he has just been fired by the Express because of too much time spent in speakeasys!!! The "dope" angle is more interesting - yes, in pre-coders there is often references to dope, hop heads, snowbirds etc but not to base the main story of a movie about it - unless it was one of those under the counter exploitation movies!! After being sacked once and for all, Steve storms out of Addison's office and makes good his promise to find a story that "will turn this town on it's ear" - the confession of a chorus girl Rose Perreti, exposing a big dope ring but soon after when Addison is found dead in his office all fingers point to Steve who has been set up by racketeer Joe Reno (Sam Hardy) who wants Steve out of the picture forever!!Special mention goes to "blink and you miss him" Lew Ayres as a copy boy. And Cupid Ainsworth who has the best role in the film as Vera, the paper's resident "sob sister". She has wise cracks for every occasion and bats off derogatory comments about her weight like Babe Ruth. There is even a conversation about being gay - Vera, with her very masculine looks and style of dress, is told to go and "be gay like I know you can be"!!!

Big News casts Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard as a pair of reporters married to each other but working for rival papers. If you expect to see the gifted comic Lombard from such future classics as My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century Big News will disappoint you greatly. This one is strictly the show for Armstrong.Armstrong drives his editor Charles Sellon to distraction with his drinking and carousing and it certainly is wearing on his marriage to Lombard. But as he says speakeasies are great place to pick up stories and Armstrong has been successful.A particular speakeasy owner Sam Hardy is the leader of a narcotics ring in their town and Armstrong has the goods on him. Hardy tries something stupid, he goes to the newspaper office and murders the editor and frames Armstrong for the crime. But naturally our intrepid reporter is too smart for Hardy.Big News is little more than a photographed stage play and the original play was no world beater either. It never holds your interest in the way such other films like Detective Story, Dead End, Rope, or Rear Window do that are all almost exclusively on one set.Big News is directed by Greogry LaCava who also did My Man Godfrey. Whatever he brought out in Lombard for that film stayed buried here. In fairness to Carole, she was not given much to work with.Still it's 1929 and movies were learning to talk. Films like Big News show how much was left to learn.

Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard star in this early talky about the newspaper business. Armstrong plays an obnoxious drunk who, inexplicably, Lombard loves. He constantly shoots off his mouth and you wonder why the paper puts up with him. By the end of the film, however, he's redeemed himself and shows that he's a darn find newspaper man.The film is odd in the way it portrays Armstrong as a relatively high-functioning and lovable alcoholic. In some ways, it seems to excuse his addiction and presents a very odd and convoluted message. It's also odd in that one of the characters seems to be that of a very manly lesbian. Both are things you never would have seen in a Hollywood film once the toughened Production Code was enacted in mid-1934--when alcoholism needed to be punished and lesbians needed to vanish.So is the film any good? Well, in spots it's quite good and in others it lets the viewer down. A few of the performances are poor (such as when the murder is discovered near the end of the film) but the overall plot is engaging and worth seeing. But, for 1929, it's actually quite good--had it been made a year or two later, I would have given it a slightly lower score.For folks like me who simply watch too many movies, it also was a thrill to see Tom Kennedy play a SMART policeman—as he almost always played very stupid ones!