Simply Perfect

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The stereotypical busy body mother-in-law is the true villain here, a vain and selfish woman so consumed with the material things her and daughter Irene Hervey got from her late husband that she manipulates her daughter into want, forcing struggling husband Donald Cook to embezzle from the bank he works for. Sentenced to seven years in prison, Cook is only comforted by Hervey's promise to wait for him, a promise Lloyd intends to make Hervey renig on. Five years go by and Hervey divorces Cook so she can marry, obviously with Lloyd's urging, the extremely possessive wealthy business man Edwin Maxwell who treats Hervey like a possession. When Cook is released, he makes his presence known, and it is obvious that he is not happy that Hervey betrayed him, setting up a confrontation that will become front page news. Yes, the story is contrived, and certainly, it paints an ugly picture of the nagging mother-in-law, brute of a husband (Hervey's second), and young women as materialistic without reasoning. But the script allows the viewer to see Hervey's guilt, Cook's regret, and allow justice to be served. Certainly, the payoff for Lloyd isn't as satisfying as I would have liked it to be, but in spite of an over emphasis on sentiment, I found it engrossing as marital drama. The presence of idiotic detectives searching for the missing Hervey and Cook serves no purpose other than low comedy, but a view of one of them with a laughing parrot reminded me, inappropriately, of the dumb thugs in "The Fuller Brush Girl". A last minute twist doesn't come out of left field, having been hinted at throughout.

"Motive for Revenge" is a slack grade C thriller from the mid-1930s. Not every plot has to have a few shreds of logic but this one defies common sense. Donald Cook -- in a performance so wooden it gives timber a bad name -- is a bank clerk who can't come up with the funds to satisfy his wife and her doting mother. So he robs the bank, gets collared by the cops and is sent off to the slammer for seven years. Which provides an excuse to throw in a slew of prison stock footage. Meanwhile, the missus marries a bloated, arrogant buffoon who manages to get himself shot. Whodunit? The answer probably surprised even the screenwriters who came up with it. Irene Hervey gives a remarkably deft performance and a few decent stage actors manage to make the most of their cardboard roles. But otherwise, it's strictly Grade C.

Donald Cook stars in this very difficult to believe film. It begins with Barry (Cook) married to a spoiled and selfish woman and her even more rotten mother living with them. It seems the ladies were quite rich and see the marriage as a come-down—and don't even try to conceal their contempt for the man. So, out of desperation to please his wife and harpy mother-in-law, the man embezzles money to keep them in a style to which they have become accustomed. He's soon caught and sent to prison. The wife says she blames herself for this, but only a short time later she divorces him and remarries! Truly these are two very despicable women! When Barry gets out of prison, he returns to see his wife in some sort of convoluted revenge plan. However, in the process her nasty new husband is killed. Now you'd THINK Barry would be happy about this or even kill her, too. But here is where the film gets dumb. While he is able to escape, some insanely misguided sense of loyalty gets him to take responsibility for the killing! Why?! This makes no sense at all—no man is THAT sappy And the ending—boy is that ridiculous! The bottom line is that this film just isn't very good and much of the acting is poor---though Cook is quite good. Probably not worth your time.