This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I found Born to be Bad quite interesting and entertaining but it was the courtroom scene that rang bells with me. A young brat has been hit by a truck whilst skating in a dangerous manner and a shyster lawyer attempts to take the truck's owner who happens to be rich for all he can. The boy recounts his injuries and is transparently led by the lawyer through a series of claims concerning his inability to play, learn and otherwise enjoy life since the accident. Does this sound a lot like a Simpsons episode to anyone else? It gets better. When the boy's claims are exposed through film evidence as fabrications, his flustered lawyer objects and I quote: "This is immaterial, irrelevant ...inconsequential and has no bearing on the case." Does this sound a bit like Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld? This is not a criticism of The Simpsons or Seinfeld but it is indicative of how little life and comedy has really changed over the years. Bogus litigation and shyster lawyers have always been and will always remain good for a laugh.

Cary Grant was 30 years old and Loretta Young was 21, and neither had quite fixed their personae. Grant doesn't seem able to relax. The guy was an acrobat earlier in life but here he seems wooden. Loretta Young, on the other hand, slings that slender chassis around with abandon and looks dewy, moist, gorgeous. When she smiles, from some angles, she resembles Blythe Danner.But, man, she is a greedy and unprincipled shark. Her young son is hit by a truck. Damage is minimal but a "specialist" is brought in to tell the very wealthy Grant, who owns the truck company, that the kid may never again walk or play the violin with his feet. (Sob.) It's all set up to milk cash out of Grant and his dairy and Grant agrees to any settlement. As the "specialist" is leaving the room, he takes Young aside and mutters that she "can settle with me later -- outside." This was before the Hayes Office Of Morality and Rectitude dropped the porticullis and eliminated such salacious filth.Man, is that little kid a nuisance. He's obviously older than seven and his ears are those of an African elephant. I swear I saw them flap in a slight breeze. His voice is an irritating whine. Cary Grant and his loving wife adopt him to raise him properly. I'd have stomped him like an insect.It's diverting and it's short. It's an historical curiosity too, and Loretta Young is a delight. Not just for the eyes. She plays a rather low-down creature who smokes, chews gum, and drops her "g"s, so that "nothing" becomes "nuthin."

This is the type of Pre-Code film that makes you curse the Hayes Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency. It is more serious and adult orientated movie than almost any movie for the next 20 years.You have ambiguous lead characters who are allowed to be both good and bad people, so you can't really guess how things will turn out. The Hayes Code pretty much separated characters into good and bad and you could easily guess who would be rewarded (the good) and who would be punished (the bad).Loretta Young is the revelation here. She looks a bit like Liza Minnelli in "Cabaret" and she seems to genuinely enjoy breaking social customs and taboos. She reminded me of Joan Crawford's character in "Rain". Her determination to seduce Cary Grant away from his wife still manages to shock us, or at least me, in 2010.I know that Loretta Young hosted an anthology television series in the 1950's, which was rerun in the daytime through the 1960's. As a child, I found it quite boring and never watched it. I'm sure I would find it fascinating today.The lackluster boy actor is the only weak part of the film. Young plays their scenes with genuine warmth, but the kid just gives us an early version of the East Side Kids caricature.Cary Grant is his usual good guy self, but undergoes quite an unusual transformation. It is rare when Grant does something to alienate the audience in a movie, as he does here. He seems in complete control, but Loretta's sexiness causes him to lose his cool persona.In most films we root for a mother who is going to lose her wayward son to state institutions. Here, we almost root against her getting her kid back. All in all, a fine film.

Having grown up w/Loretta Young as a paragon of virtue in her TV show and her movies (seen on TV) - The Bishop's Wife, The Famer's Daughter, Come to the Stable, etc, etc, etc - I was surprised and entertained by this bauble. She plays a slut w/verve, AND she is dressed w/ her habitual hyper elegance. She changes outfits 5or 6 times a day, evidently. Her rather brutal screaming at her raucous son strikes an odd note, making her (no other word will do) horniness even more striking. Cary Grant is about as long-suffering & gullible as he was w/ Mae West, but he also looks good. Fast, sentimental and raunchy, she even gets to tear up several times - a swell little film.