hyped garbage

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

While it's very hard to believe, this film is about a sleazy lawyer whose career consists of chasing ambulances (literally) and making fake claims for injuries to his clients. Joe Stevens (Lee Tracy) is a lawyer without scruples and you get the impression that the movie is supposed to be a comedy. However, oddly, later in the film is becomes a bit of a romance and by the end the audience is supposed to be pulling for Stevens! This really makes no sense and although he CLEARLY is a crook, the filmmakers seemed confused about what to do with the tone and focus of the picture.As far as the actors go, they did a nice job with the highly flawed material they were given. This sort of role was tailor-made for Tracy and he's ably supported by Charles Butterworth and Frank Morgan as well as Madge Evans as the obligatory love interest. But I'd rate this one no more than a 4 and a time-passer at best. The film has lots of great scenes but no coherence whatsoever.

Sometimes when you run into an old, obscure movie, one of the credits will suggest whether it's worth watching. Take "The Nuisance," written for the screen by Sam and Bella Spewack, a team with a flair for sparkling dialogue whose Broadway credits include "Kiss Me Kate." In "The Nuisance," they provide Lee Tracy with the verbal firepoweer for his performance as a fast-talking, charmingly corrupt, ambulance-chasing lawyer whose pet target is the local streetcar company. With the help of Frank Morgan as a boozy medico with a gift for doctoring x-rays, he turns small accidents into big paydays. When the company hires lovely Madge Evans to entrap Tracy, the fun begins, building to a hilarious lesson in the antiquated laws of the land. (Watching one scene, I was reminded of the fact that it was still supposedly illegal to shoot rabbits from a moving elevated train in Manhattan even after all the El trains were torn down.) The result is a fast, frequently funny film with a surprisingly modern feel. In fact, despite scenes like a courtroom battle involving the fare to ride a streetcar -- five cents -- "The Nuisance" doesn't seem as outdated as the laws it satirizes

No publicity agent could have created a more high flying life for Lee Tracy than the one he was living. An "actors" actor and born to play in those very racy pre-coders, he first found fame in the hit play that combined gangsters and showgirls - "Broadway". It ran for 603 performances. He then played Hildy Johnson in "The Front Page" and it was claimed he never missed a performance. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood, always on the lookout for new and different personalities beckoned. He could have been MGM's answer to James Cagney ( with a lot of humour thrown in) but his high living caught up with him and by 1934 the studio were washing their hands of him.Only in the early thirties could they make a comedy about "ambulance chasers" - and make it side splitting - people knew how to laugh then. "Ambulance chaser" shyster lawyer, J. Phineas Stevens wants to uphold the rights of every "forgotten man and forgotten women" - even if they want to be left forgotten!! With the help of an always intoxicated doctor, Prescott (Frank Morgan) and his pal "Floppy" Phil (Charles Butterworth) who is always willing to step in front of traffic, a bottle of Mercurochrome on hand, they stage accidents, always arrive first at real ones with a bunch of paid "eye witnesses" ready to swear that the drivers were doing the wrong thing. Stevens finds pretty Dorothy Mason (Madge Evans) sprawled at the site of a train wreck. He thinks she is just another pretty victim - in reality she has been hired by John Calhoun (John Miljan) head of a street car company, to try and find evidence to get Stevens disbarred. After the death of Prescott, she realises that Calhoun is just another mercenary corrupt official.The story line wouldn't fill a page but Tracy's lines have the rapidity of a machine gun - I found I was laughing non stop. Although Morgan is excellent, the pathos of his playing does seem a bit out of place. Madge Evans, as usual, makes a pretty but intelligent romantic diversion and Charles Butterworth is just wonderful as Steven's slippery sidekick. You may recognise Virginia Cherrill (she was the blind girl in Chaplin's "City Lights") as the flirtatious Miss Rutherford and Nat Pendleton as a dopey street car conductor brought before the court for stealing nickels and dimes.Highly, Highly Recommended.

I'd seen this before but was still knocked out by it. This holds true for "The Half-Naked Truth" too. To my great surprise it does not, for me, with "Blessed Event." The first time I saw that, I couldn't believe its brilliance. The second time, several years later, it still looked good but packed no real punch. (Tracy is also excellent in "Bombshell" with the sensational Jean Harlow and, decades later, in "The Best Man.") This movie is funny, starting, and touching. It moves with ease from one of these to another. Frank Morgan, another extremely versatile performer, is very touching as the alcoholic doctor who works with ambulance-chasing lawyer Tracy on his schemes.All the supporting cast is good, with special mention given to Charles Butterworth as floppy, the con many who was faking being hit by cars before Tracy meets up with him again and will probably be doing it till he finally really does get run over.