SHE KNEW ALL THE ANSWERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 113, 22 August 1941, Page 16

SHE KNEW ALL THE ANSWERS

(Columbia)

‘THIs film is like the proverbial curate’s egg-with the proviso that the curate would need to be a particularly easy-going sort

of person. The main trouble is that the director apparently couldn’t decide whether he was making a drama or a crazy comedy. The result is like eating plum pudding with popcorn. The story-what there is of it-concerns a young man, rich as only a Hollywood hero can be, who is prevented from marrying a chorus girl (Joan Bennett) by his guardian (Franchot Tone), with pince-nez and an office on Wall Street. To prove to this old fossil that she would make a worthy wife for the playboy, the girl forces her way into a job in his office, seeking only a letter of © recommendation from him. In pursuit of this letter she even goes to the length of turning down the gift of a mink coat (Continued on next page)

FILM REVIEWS (Continued from previous page) -unnatural woman! At last, and somewhat obviously, she finds herself in love with her boss, the course of their romance having included eye exercises at a select club and an all-night spree on Coney Island where the brightest line of the piece is spoken by a side-show barker-" Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone." Finally, she throws over her not very reluctant. play boy and runs out on her wedding in order to get married. Not the least unsatisfactory feature is the way in which the consciences of the principal characters step into the picture at odd intervals and advise their respective charges-an attempt at fantasy quite -out of place in a film that was already attempting too many other methods of plot development. ;