What a waste of my time!!!

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Director: HARRY BEAUMONT. Screenplay: Mary C. McCall Jr. Story: Harry Ruby and James O'Hanlon. Based on the character created by Wilson Collison. Uncredited screenplay contributors: Harry Clork, Howard Emmett Rogers. Photography: Robert Planck. Film editor: Frank E. Hull. Art directors: Cedric Gibbons, Howard Campbell. Set decorators: Edwin B. Willis, Helen Conway. Music: David Snell. Songs by Ralph Freed and Sammy Fain. "Panhandle Pete" number choreographed by Sammy Lee. Additional photography: William Daniels. Unit manager: Hugh Boswell. Assistant director: Charles O'Malley. Sound supervisor: Douglas Shearer. Western Electric Sound System. Producer: George Haight.Copyright 20 July 1944 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at Loew's State: 28 September 1944. U.S. release: September 1944. U.K. release: November-December 1944. Australian release: 22 February 1945. 9 reels. 8,069 feet. 90 minutes. U.K. release title: YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO ME.SYNOPSIS: Maisie goes to Reno? Before seeing the picture, we presumed she was dying to get a divorce from the schnook she married in Ringside Maisie. No? What's she doing in Reno, then? Oh, I see. She's taking a well-earned rest from that super-boring airplane factory job featured in Swing Shift Maisie.NOTES: The 8th of the nine Maisie pictures. COMMENT: Needless to say, this entry, the best of the Maisie pictures was also one of the least popular with audiences. The cast is great. John Hodiak who had a small role in the previous entry has a different part in this one, but it's the lead. Hodiak was always one of my favorite actors. Rejected by the armed services because of the hypertension that eventually led to his fatal heart attack, Hodiak always invested his performances with an appealing intensity. A sort of middle-class equivalent of John Garfield's firmly working- class protagonist, Hodiak always gave the impression of playing on the edge. He always invested his characters with depth — no matter how superficially they may have been written. And of course there's Ava Gardner, definitely Hollywood's top siren as far as I'm concerned. You can keep your blonde pin-up girls. Ava Gardner, like Simone Simon and Ingrid Bergman, always projected class, with a capital "C". Admittedly, her role is small, but vital. She plays it with total conviction and looks most attractive too. (Maybe William Daniels photographed her scenes?)I could go through the rest of the cast, ticking through the performers one by one, but I'll content myself with praising Byron Foulger. Always a number one character player with me since I first caught him as Professor Henderson in the Universal serial, "The Master Key". In fact for years, not knowing his real name, I used to call him, Professor Henderson. Here Foulger gives us a comic near- sighted psychiatrist, a delicious impersonation that raises more laughs in ten minutes than Miss Sothern contrives in the entire picture. As for the director, Harry Beaumont, a neglected master if ever there was one. You don't agree with me? I appeal to Orson Welles. Isn't Harry Beaumont one of the greatest? Orson fidgets. He knows what I'm getting at. But he's eventually forced to admit that he greatly admired Beaumont's handling of the courtroom scene in this movie. So much so that he imitated it, throwing in a few more tricks for "The Lady from Shanghai".But these are not the only terrific moments in Maisie Goes to Reno. With a plot fashioned by Harry "Three Little Words" Ruby and James "Calamity Jane" O'Hanlon, we know to expect the delightfully unexpected. For instance, what about that running gag with the little black dog? And what about the delightful "Panhandle Pete" number? And how about the usually meek Donald Meek as a wonderfully grouchy manager with no warmth in his testy heart at all?Production values with their big crowd scenes at the bus depot, the hotel and the court-room are mighty impressive. Only Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer could dress up a "B" movie with such style and finesse.

This eighth installment of the Maisie franchise is pretty strange and the plot very contrived. Yet, it still manages to entertain. It begins with Maisie being ordered to take a vacation from the defense plant, as she's exhausted and hasn't had a vacation in almost a year and a half. When she meets an old friend who is a band leader, he invites her to sing with his band in Reno. This way, her vacation will be paid for and all she'll need to do is get there. At the bus station, however, she meets a soldier (Tom Drake) who tells her a sob story in order to get her to give him her bus ticket. It seems his wife is now in Reno trying to get a divorce and he wants to stop her, as it's all just a bit misunderstanding. She gives him the ticket but then all leaves are canceled--and he's ordered back to camp. Maisie agrees to see the wife and deliver a letter to her.When Maisie arrives at where the wife is staying, he gives her the letter and learns that the husband is a creep. Maisie is satisfied and decides to stay out of the situation. BUT, she then learns accidentally that the lady she spoke with is NOT the soldier's wife! What gives? Who is impersonating the wife and why? Perhaps it's because the real wife (Ava Gardner) is very rich and someone is trying to steal her fortune. The problem is no one believes Maisie and she has a devil of a time convincing any one! As I said, the plot is strange and contrived. But, it manages to be pretty entertaining as well--especially at the end. Not among the better Maisie films but all are awfully good, so it's worth your time.

The first third of this movie was irritating, the second third was mildly amusing, and the final third was downright tedious.I didn't even find the premise to be plausible, in that this to-be divorcée was allowing her secretary to run her life for her. Rich people live in a different world. They are accustomed to telling people what to do, not to having people tell them what to do.Possible spoiler to follow: I also didn't buy the cliché about how easily people assume that someone is mentally unbalanced. Just because someone believes there is a plot afoot, does not automatically mean they are a mental case. It's not like no one has ever plotted against anyone for financial gain.I didn't enjoy this movie. I ought to have heeded the other reviews. I wish I had skipped it.

This middling entry in MGM's answer to Warner's Torchy Blaine series has Maisie going to Reno, getting involved in a mystery surrounding a divorcing couple.It is a rather dull entry, the result of an uninvolving script and bland characterizations. Harry Beaumont, one of MGM's longtime B directors, does his best with the visual story telling, but even Anne Southern, aided and abetted by some up-and-coming players like Ava Gardner and John Hodiak can't do much with the story but talk fast.MGM, once Thalberg was dead, never quite knew what to do with unglamorous characters and a smattering of 40s jive talk dates the story and gives an infantile air to the entire operation. For completest of the talent involved, but if you miss this, you won't suffer.