the audience applauded

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

An early film from George Cukor from the 30's. More a filmed stage play than a piece of celluloid. The character appearances are more like stage entries than camera set-ups but what can you do when the early days of cinema were the beginnings of a learning curve of what could be done rather than what could not. Anyway, a dinner date is coming up & the various ho-polloi of the New York upper-crust are meeting for a meal. Various story lines are told w/o anything resembling depth & the cast is more than up to snuff for the cause. Wallace Beery & Jean Harlow are fantastic as the bickering couple, we get 2 Barrymore's (John & Lionel, Drew's grandfather & great uncle) & the priceless Marie Dressler who steals the show as a once grand dame of the stage now having to deal w/actual life.

There is a lot of melodrama in this movie, and the first part, especially when Marie Dressler is not on the screen, can be slow going. Once we get to the night of the dinner, however, it gets much better.Billie Burke's scenes, both at the news that the aspic has been dropped and when she berates her husband and daughter for coming to her with their problems when she has a dinner to give, are both funny and very sad at the same time, sad that any person could be so caught up in the superficial to get that upset over it.The scene where Lee Tracy tells off Larry Renault is also very well done. (The scene after that, John Barrymore's last, descends into real melodrama and becomes, for me, hard to watch.) After that, the scene between Jean Harlow and Wallace Berry is brilliant. It is rather like *All About Eve* in that it shows just how low human beings can descend in a desire to destroy each other.And then there is the dinner party itself. Harlow has several great moments, and looks like a million dollars, but the ugliest person on the set by far, Marie Dressler, gets the prize for her delivery of the last lines, as she walks with Harlow into Dinner at Eight.

I think it would be a mistake to reveal much about the story of this film, so I will deal only with it merits.David O. Selznick set out to create another of his quality productions with "Dinner at Eight", starring an all-star cast.Billie Burke, with her lilting voice, plays Millicent, the wife of a shipping business owner. She is self-consumed and intent on creating a perfect dinner party.Lionel Barrymore plays Oliver Jordan, her husband and a man with several problems on his hands. Madge Evans plays Paula, their daughter who is engaged to a young, attractive man who is cut from very regular cloth. She is involved with another man--one who offers a more exotic and challenging relationship.Wallace Beery plays Dan Packard, a coarse and aggressive businessman who is invited to the dinner at Oliver's request. His wife Kitty is played by Jean Harlow. She's a platinum-plated gold digger whose relationship with Dan is similar to that between Billie and Harry in "Born Yesterday".Edmund Lowe plays Dr. Talbot, a "masher" who treats several characters.Marie Dressler plays Carlotta Vance, a retired actress who flaunts a lifestyle she cannot sustain. Ms. Dressler often plays the matronly socialite for laughs; here she is a fully-developed character who is allowed to show her real acting talent.John Barrymore plays Larry Renault, an actor who is on the down-side of a career onstage and in film. His is one of the bravest portrayals I have ever seen, as his character's personality and situation are written so close to his own.The main strength of this film is the story, which allows each character to be developed, giving emotional depth to the story. It is well worth seeing.

With the last sounds of the frightening echo coming from the 1929 Economic Crash in Wall Street "Dinner at Eight" delivers ruthless and unsympathetic characters who are trying to live the best lives they can get with glamour, style, away from their husbands and wives but together with their lovers, even though most of them are doomed to failure. The stage play of this might be interesting, funny and warmful but George Cukor's film with all the classic stars from MGM didn't add anything to his career simply because is boring, tedious to the fullest and we, as audiences, have no other place to go other than watch this film because it is often mentioned in lists of great films of all time, and when you see the constellation of stars present in this tragedy, names like John Barrymore, Marie Dressler, Billie Burke, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery among others you really would expect something at least decent. It turns out to be a very boring movie that has no point, no direction, no meaning and it's not even a good entertainment.It's just a plain boring picture with a almost ensemble casting. Almost because there's something about the acting here that makes this film worth of a few stars. Harlow and Beery were great, they have the funniest scenes in the movie as a rich couple that seems to never go along right; Lionel Barrymore and Marie Dressler are quite well too; John Barrymore plays a figure that resembles himself, a decadent and drunk actor who lives in a hotel without having money to pay for, and desperate to find a good play to act. He's the most interesting in the film and his solid dramatic acting made this more watchable. Billie Burke was completely annoying as the lady who invites all those rich people for the so mentioned Dinner at Eight, a confusing and strange celebration of the bourgeoisie futility.And to think that Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote this (in a few years away, in the shadows of his drunkenness and trying to recover his fame he wrote what would become the best film of all time, and that is "Citizen Kane") and George Cukor ("Born Yesterday") were behind all this mess. A play that takes one and a half hour to get to its title, the disastrous dinner has to be badly translated to the screen. Nothing happens, the characters lives are filled with sorrow, failed things and everyone's pretend to be happy (or at least there's some who get fully loaded with drinks so that's why the so called happiness) and the meaning....well, there isn't one really.For a drama it is boring (sorry, I can't find another word to say about this film) and for a comedy it is very unfunny with one or two well humored moments. For the most of its core it's silly, silly, silly. I had a bad headache before and during the film and it got real worse after it. But barely I would know that my next one would be even worst than this ("The Family Stone" but please do read my review of it) and that's why "Dinner at Eight" gets 3 stars, this and because of the casting. 3/10