Wow! Such a good movie.

Good idea lost in the noise

A Disappointing Continuation

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

What starts off as a feature variation on the Eddie Cantor song Keep Young and Beautiful from Roman Scandals quickly turns into My Baby Just Cares For Me as beauty doctor Cary Grant finds out when he breaks up the marriage of client Genevieve Tobin, marries her and learns that life with a glamour girl ain't always so glamorous. Edward Everett Horton is her ex who takes up with Grant's jilted secretary Helen Mack who loved him from afar. Pre-code in every shape and form, this features some deliciously raunchy dialog and plenty of innuendo.At first, you think that the movie is going to be a plug for Max Factor, but then it suddenly switches to an obvious crack at the obsession with beauty and the genuine ridiculousness of the industry that still obsesses today. Ugly old women yearn to look decades younger, those still young prove themselves to be shamefully materialistic and foolish. Not much has changed in 80 years! Grant gets to sing a bit and Tobin spoofs the ridiculousness of vanity with delightful tongue in cheek. Horton as usual is a delightfully funny pompous fool. Mack is noble but nobody's fool yet her pairing with Horton is never convincing. If you pick up on the parody, you'll see past the shallowness and find a handsome romantic comedy with plenty to enjoy.

Because KISS AND MAKE-UP was made very early in his career, I guess I can understand why Cary Grant could make such a bad film. But make no mistakes--this is a bad film. While the first 90% isn't great, the finale is truly one of the most wretched scenes in Grant's wonderful career.The film has very unusual casting because Cary is cast as a plastic surgeon and beauty guru of sorts. He is so famous that his practice is making him a fortune, he has a radio show and women adore him. Through all this, he has a secretary who adores him. It's incredibly obvious to the audience and, of course, Cary can't see this--a movie cliché indeed. This potential romance with his nice secretary is nixed when a vain society lady falls for Cary. This lady is considered the ideal beauty and Cary is proud of his creation--the only trouble is that she's still married to Edward Everett Horton. though he is only too happy to give divorce her. Cary finds out why, as his new wife spends every second of the day working on her beauty--taking 4 and a half hours to dress for a dinner, eating lettuce and lean ham, refusing to go into the sun or swim. She's as much fun as an enema and the marriage fizzles almost immediately. At this point, Cary FINALLY realizes that his secretary is the woman for him---but she's about to marry Horton. So in a "madcap" finale, he chases her in a cab through the streets of Paris.As for the finale, it truly stinks. It looks more like a chase scene from a 3 Stooges short--one of their poorer ones at that!! From the film to go from subtle comedy and romance to slapstick was abrupt and unnecessary. In fact, nothing about this ending worked at all and made me cringe. You'll just have to see it for yourself to understand how a sub-par Grant film became one of his worst due to this ending.By the way, if you care, the worst film Cary Grant made during his great career was ONCE UPON A TIME--a film he made during the height of his fame. It's a "heart-warming" story of a cute little kid with a dancing caterpillar--and Cary is the promoter who wants to make them famous. It's so bad that it's actually worth seeing--just to see how bad it is!

I liked this movie more than I had expected. It is a light comedy that kept me entertained throughout. At one moment we see an American couple going to a traditional Italian restaurant (chequered tablecloths, vines overhead and all) ordering corned beef and cabbage. As if this weren't enough, they break out in song: I love - cooorned beef and cabbage! It's disarmingly silly. Dark haired lead actress Helen Mack is cute and funny, a kind of an early Holly Hunter.Kiss and Make-Up delivers mainly eye candy. At the center of its story is a beauty parlor in Paris which is also a gym and a clinic with the general aim to improve the physical appearance of the female. Cary Grant is the owner and boss of the outfit and supposed to be a kind of a health guru who helps nature along with creams and ointments etc. which he also markets through radio programs and books (a kind of Dr Lovell?).A great many beautiful girls and bare legs are on display, and the whole set up of the parlor is just as good and elegant as one designed by famous set designer Cedric Gibbons for the later made, more famous movie The Women. Also very notable is some of the set design during the middle part of the movie which takes place in a Mediterranean holiday resort. It is clearly inspired by the Italian version of Art Deco, with curved walls and furniture, circular windows, slender railings and discreet floor patterns. The hotel suite of the couple played by Grant and Genevieve Tobin features a kind of a gallery on very slender chromium pillars in front of a huge window which leads to a big terrace with a view of a historical Italian town on a sea or a lake shore. It's just great to imagine those smart people sitting in a Hollywood bungalow leafing through the latest issues of Italian architectural magazines like Casabella or Domus.

Dr. Maurice Lamar is a world famous, egotistical, Parisian plastic surgeon. He prides himself on making women slaves to their new beauty. Maintenance, always maintenance. Overt innuendo abounds that his patients, once transformed by his skilled hand, become his conquests. His affairs he refers to as "lovely episodes."Enamored of his masterpiece, Madame Caron, they soon ditch her husband and marry. We soon see that "Dr. Frankenstein" has married his monster. The moral of the story is that Dr. Lamar discovers that it's no fun to love (Kiss) a woman,when that same woman has become obsessed with her looks, figure and Makeup to the exclusion of all else. Beauty, truly, is in the eye of the beholder.