Very Cool!!!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A crowded train would be the obvious place for a murder, but in spite of a lack of room, the disallowance of pets in the sitting car and huge lines for the dining car, that's not where the murder occurs. It's in Nick Charles's home town, a quaint suburb of Boston where eccentrics roam around with rumors of something evil going on. Nick's parents are seemingly normal, but the neighbors not so much, so when a young man is suddenly shot and killed (right as he is ringing Nick's parents' doorbell), there are a lot of suspects, and between Nick, Nora and Asta, the killer is obviously going to be exposed.The fifth and second to last installment of the "Thin Man" series is a comic delight with suspense to boot. The chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy remains strong, with Lucille Watson and Harry Davenport a delight as Nick's homey parents. Anne Revere lets her hair down as a downtrodden recluse, with Donald meek, Lloyd Corrigan, Donald MacBride and Edward Brophy among the town eccentrics. The young Gloria DeHaven is boisterous but shrill as the girlfriend of the murder victim. Other minor roles are played with babbity and provincial coldness by some delightful minor character places.Focusing more on the visual farce from the start (Powell chasing after Asta in a crowded train station; Nick and Nora trying to get through a crowded train corridor while a fat man coming towards them tries the same thing; Nora getting a spanking in front of his parents, and later a reluctant participant in a sudden jitterbug), this is light entertainment, and if not in the same class as the entries directed by W.S. Van Dyke, it is still quite good. The script is clever and witty, and the mystery filled with twists and turns quite surprising.

I've read comments from other reviewers that as the Thin Man series went on, the quality of the movies went down hill. Well you can't really tell by this, the fifth film in the line up, as this one had me fully engaged right from the start. Asta has a fair share of quality time, Myrna Loy adds a layer of 'I Love Lucy' to her character Nora Charles, and lo and behold, Nick (William Powell) runs the entire show on apple cider instead of booze. The venue is also a nice change of pace, as the Charles's head over to Nick's home town in Sycamore Springs for a restful vacation.As usual, there are a whole host of interesting characters on hand, as the inevitable happens and Nick is drawn into a murder case when someone is actually shot on the doorstep of his parents' home! Never before has wife Nora been so animated in her desire to have Nick get involved in a case, as this time it would demonstrate how clever he is to a father who had become disillusioned over his son's choice of profession. But you know, I didn't think it was very admirable the way Nick took his wife over a knee for that spanking - ouch! Can you just hear the wailing of the war on women folks if this was made today?! Here's a question - what's the shortest amount of screen time on record for a character in a movie? Holy smokes, Ralph Brooke, the actor who portrayed Peter Berton might have been visible for about a minute before he got shot! I fully expected that the actor remained uncredited but he's right there in the cast line up. I hope he fared better in his other movie appearances.Here's what I have to admit though. Whenever Nick Charles goes into one of his illuminating explanations revealing the identity of the killer, I just about completely zone out. I suppose I could back track and try to follow the details here but ultimately it doesn't make too much difference. At least this one had that neat back story with the tampered paintings and the espionage angle going for it. What I was really hoping for though was for Asta to come along and take a whizz on the collie in the windmill painting.

This is my third favourite film in the series after "The Thin Man" and "After the Thin Man" (no pun intended!). William Powell and Myrna Loy are simply wonderful and it has an excellent supporting cast, particularly Harry Davenport, Anne Revere, Donald Meek and Lucile Watson. However, I have to give special mention to Gloria DeHaven, who is an absolute laugh riot as the overly dramatic drama student Laurabelle Ronson who feels everything "here, inside." She's still alive at the ripe old age of 89, I'm glad to say. Her career spanned from "Modern Times" in 1936 to an episode of "Touched by an Angel" in 2000.This is the first film in the series in which the "Thin Man" of the title refers to Nick Charles due to the popular misconception that he was the Thin Man, when in fact it referred to Clyde Wynant, a supporting character in the novel and first film. This is similar to the situation with the "Pink Panther" film series 20+ years later.It was also the first film in the series made after the US entry into World War II, which is alluded to several times, most notably the McGuffin being plans for a propeller which an unnamed "foreign power" wants to get its hands on. The wartime rationing is the reason that the characters' prolific drinking, a trademark of the first four films, is significantly (and disappointingly) toned down on this occasion. According to Myrna Loy, changing attitudes to said drinking was one of the reasons that the series ended with the next film "Song of the Thin Man".

This was the fifth of six THIN MAN movies made by MGM between 1934 and 1947, featuring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles – the debonair but perennially tipsy married detectives created by Dashiell Hammett; it was also the first not to be directed by W.S. Van Dyke.The classic original had set a standard for mystery-comedies until THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) – coincidentally another Hammett adaptation – took the thriller genre down darker alleys (heralding the advent of the “Film Noir” style). The THIN MAN sequels were content to repeat the formula which, in the wartime years, rendered them perfect escapism – especially given the increase of the homespun quotient with each new entry – but also positively bland when compared to what was being accomplished in the adult-oriented work made at other studios (such as RKO and Warners)! Anyway, a lot of the success (and lingering popularity) of the series depended on the undeniable chemistry between Powell and Loy – displaying charm, wit and finesse (even when indulging in slapstick!) at every turn…not forgetting the cute antics of their inseparable fox terrier, Asta.As can be deduced from the title, this time around Nick and Nora leave the big city (and their offspring, Nick Jr., behind) to pay a visit to Charles’ elderly parents; however, they’ve barely arrived when a corpse literally lands on their doorstep! While Nick professes to be on vacation and lets local Police Chief Donald MacBride take charge of the investigation, he actually does his own sleuthing surreptitiously (with the help of reformed criminal Edward Brophy, a typical figure in THIN MAN films, and doctor/ex-buddy Lloyd Corrigan); on Nora’s part, believing her husband has really taken a hike from work and determined to impress his father (Harry Davenport) – who disapproved of this particular line of business – gets in on the act herself but, invariably, makes a mess of it! Traditionally, the plot – involving concealed identities and industrial espionage – is so convoluted that, for the benefit of all concerned (the audience included), Nick brings together the endless list of suspects and slowly, confidently lays the trap for the real culprit (which, as always, turns out to be the least likely villain!).A solidly entertaining effort, therefore, if a clear step behind the first two outings – thanks also to a cast peppered with familiar faces (including Lucile Watson as cheerful Old Mrs. Charles, Gloria De Haven as an aspiring young actress who brings the whole thespian baggage into her home-life, Anne Revere’s pivotal crazed-villager character, Leon Ames as the man who devises the elaborate plan to pass off the designs to a factory into the hands of a rival firm hidden behind four innocuous paintings, Donald Meek’s nervous art dealer, Anita Bolster’s eccentric maid in the Charles household secretly admiring of Nick’s activities) and a script co-written by Robert Riskin (best-known for his work on Frank Capra pictures) and Dwight Taylor (ditto on Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers vehicles, though he did contribute the occasional hard-boiled effort, notably providing the story for Samuel Fuller’s PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET [1953]) featuring such sure-fire gags as trying to cross a densely-populated corridor in a train and Loy being cajoled by an eager sailor into a jitterbug routine (to Powell’s cringing embarrassment).