Too much of everything

Dreadfully Boring

disgusting, overrated, pointless

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Copyright 9 July 1936 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 9 July 1936 (ran one week). Australian release (as a "B" feature): 7 October 1936. 75 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Working-class couple separate when wife has a yen for clothes and luxuries that husband cannot afford.COMMENT: The film has its moments, thanks to an agreeable cast, fighting their way through a script that is not nearly as amusing or scintillating as it obviously thinks it is, plus some very attractive photography (e.g. the scene in the lightless apartment) - though Miss Stanwyck is not lit all that flatteringly. Willie Best is prominently featured in the credits, though his part has been removed and is now limited to a two-shot of him entering the marriage bureau and a long shot of him in the background of same! Unfortunately, the cast is also saddled with Ned Sparks, whose monotonous cigar-faced delivery of quite ordinary lines makes them seem even slower and less funny. This character just doesn't belong in what was doubtless conceived as a light comedy of manners. Gene Raymond is more animated than usual and Robert Young is very effective as a pestiferous playboy.

... in a production that is an OK time passer but is based on entirely archaic ideas on the subject of marriage. If I'm going to watch a film from 1936, I guess I should be prepared to deal with the values of 1936, but this is just too much.Mike Martin (Gene Raymond) is an engineer who basically nags model and long-time girlfriend Carolyn (Barbara Stanwyck) into marrying him. The arguments begin at their quickie civil marriage ceremony and continue as Mike's estimate that $35 a week is enough for them to get by on is incorrect. Plus no wife of his is going to work! It's a Martin tradition. Before this film is over I felt like if it was a Martin tradition to walk a tightrope strung between high rises on your 30th birthday Mike would be up there doing it. He's not exactly a deep thinker.Meanwhile, Carolyn is stuck making Mike's maxims work. Mike gets to live the dream of supporting a wife that doesn't work, but his dream is really a mirage. Carolyn is the one that actually deals with overdue bills and the bill collectors coming to the door threatening repossession. After their furniture is repossessed and is only returned because wealthy friend Hugh McKenzie (Robert Young) pays the amount due - all happening before Mike gets home and thus without his knowledge - Carolyn decides to go to work so their budget will stretch and hide the fact from Mike. When Mike beats Carolyn home one day and discovers the truth, it is actually the knuckle-dragging groom that walks out.All through the film there is the involvement of wealthy Hugh, who loves Carolyn but wants her to be happy whatever she decides. Let me tell you, Robert Young does not play a drunk well at all. In fact he's quite annoying as drunken partying Hugh. But when he plays a sober Hugh he's a stark and pleasant contrast to the Neanderthal Mike.Now this is a 1936 production code era romance, so you know it's going to work itself out in some conventional way already, so I'll just let you watch and find out how that happens.I give this five stars because Barbara Stanwyck makes almost any film watchable, plus there are the hilarious antics of Ned Sparks and Helen Broderick as Paul and Mattie Dodson, friends of the couple who don't seem to like each other at all and can't even remember what town in which they were married. When Carolyn asks them why they get married in the first place they say "because it was raining", whatever that means.I would consider this film a take it or leave it proposition.

One of Barbara Stanwyck's lesser efforts, The Bride Walks Out gets in a few jabs about chauvinistic pride but with little velocity behind its screwball intent it never reaches home plate. Mike and Carolyn get hitched and he immediately puts his foot down about her working outside the home. As the bills mount she takes a job on the side to stem the tide of debt collectors but he finds out and the couple split. Miserable without each other they shakily attempt to reconcile.Save for the abrasive Gene Raymond as Mike, Bride fields a decent enough acting squad with Babs, Robert Young as a well heeled interloper and a broad comic support line of Ned Sparks, Helen Broderick, Hattie Mc Daniel and Billy Gilbert. But lightweight director Leigh Jason fails to get cast or tempo out of its lethargy and the Bride Walks Out deserves one itself.

This is a very dated story about two people in love, Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Raymond, and their marital problems. Stanwyck plays a model who came from a poor home, and she doesn't want to give up her $50 a week job and live on only Raymond's $35/week salary. He talks her into it anyway, though she screams all the way down the aisle. Soon she finds herself in money trouble and gets involved with a playboy, Robert Young. To ease her financial problems, she works on the sly.The performances are delightful, but it's a slim story and then there's the business of this guy not wanting his wife to work. I normally don't have a problem watching films in the context of their times, but in this case, the husband seemed unreasonable to me. Ned Sparks and Helen Broderick are hilarious. Stanwyck is always fresh and sincere. Gene Raymond is attractive, but I've always failed to see why he was so important to MGM that Mayer forced Jeannette Macdonald to marry him. The film didn't really hold my interest, but Stanwyck is always worth seeing.