Overrated

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely brilliant

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

In many ways, this romantic comedy is like the earlier Hollywood film, "The Lady Eve". So, if you like one, you'll likely enjoy the other as well.When the story begins, an old man checks into a swank hotel on the Riviera with a very, very young wife. What the folks in the hotel don't know is that they are NOT married...they are father and daughter and they are hucksters. The plan is for the 'husband' to disappear their first night together and for the poor wronged 'wife' (Peggy Cummins) on her wedding night to stand back and see what happens next. Well, the residents of the hotel were touched by their story and donate a lot of money to her to help her out in her time of need. The problem is that she meets Terence, a particularly nice guy who tries to help her...because she starts falling in love with the guy! What's next for this huckster and his daughter? While the film is never hilarious, it is enjoyable and worth seeing. My only reservation is that movies like these tend to make sociopaths seem cute or likable...and they are, in reality, quite evil.

SYNOPSIS: A small town ne'er-do-well hopes to win the girl of his choice by running for office as town mayor. NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Ambassador on 28 September 1925 and ran a very satisfactory 90 performances. Alan Dinehart both starred as the small-town backslapper and directed. COMMENT: The story of this film has hardly any affinity with its title. The plot mainly centers on the hero (George Reeves) winning the mayoral race against the firmly entrenched incumbent (Ferris Taylor). The fact that he will also win the girl (the lovely Rosemary Lane) seems almost incidental, as he is also keen to put down the town blowhard (John Eldredge), especially as that particular loudmouth has marriage designs on Miss Lane. The plot holds promise but unfortunately it is not realized, despite valiant efforts by Miss Lane and Mr Reeves. Oddly, it's the support cast that lets the side down, due both to miscasting (Francis Pierlot is right outside his range as the heroine's dad) and to Noel Smith's dull, listless, uninvolved direction. Yet another problem lies with a far too talkative screenplay that often gives the impression of a filmed stage play. Sad to say, photography and other credits are equally uninspired. Production values rate no more than average for a "B" feature. Perhaps slightly less.

With boring actors and a dull script, this movie doesn't even pass the basic test of credibility. We are asked to believe that a con man has made a lot of money over a great many years with a scheme that looks very unlikely to bring in any money at all. (And if it did, surely gossip in the hotel trade or newspaper reports would soon put an end to it.) The film is full of details that accentuate the sloppiness of the idea. The crook at one point has a handful of false passports. He could not possibly afford these with the money he makes. At another point, the crook and his henchman meet another crook and take him into their scheme, even though he is very poor at what he does AND it would mean less money for each of them AND they don't need another man to pull the scheme off! He is only around so we can (presumably) be amused by his (presumably) funny face and accent. Though this film tries to belong to the genteel- but-naughty tradition of English comedy, it is neither, just clumsy and prissy.

Peggy Cummins and Ronald Squire are a pair of con artists who make a living from fleecing expensive hotels and their guests.Terence Morgan is a very unlikely man from the Treasury looking out for people exceeding their travel allowance.What a surprise when he falls for Cummins.Squires and his assistant Geoffrey Sumner,attempt to sell a hotel to James Hayter using forged documents.Hayter is also a con man and the notes he uses are forged.Squires gets caught by the French police but Morgan and Cummins escape to get married.Unfortunately I didn't laugh once.The script was poor. Morgan is not great at playing comedy.There are some really good British films of the 1950s but this is not one of them.