So much average

How sad is this?

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Just not good."Parnell" from 1937 stars two of MGM's greatest, Clark Gable and Myrna Loy, in the hopes, I guess, that people would go to see it. I wasn't there so I don't know if they did but I doubt it.As someone here said, the roles would have been better suited to Spencer Tracy and Maureen O'Sullivan.Parnell, who died at the age of 45, was a controversial figure with a complicated political career. And the film does show some of what he went through, including false accusations that he supported the murders of two people in power, the trial, and then suit against the newspaper. Other problems followed, but the film is most concerned with his torrid romance (well, not in this movie) between Parnell and a married woman, Katherine O'Shea. Now, in the movie, they don't get married. In real life, they did. And as far as a torrid affair, I'll say - she had three of his children while she was married. The couple wasn't married very long -- from June of 1891 and he died in October 1891 of stomach cancer. However, he also suffered from kidney failure. He is shown, not very convincingly, as ill in the film.The film is very melodramatic, with Loy relying on the melodrama to get her through her role. Gable could not have been more wrong - he did not have a great range as an actor, and this called for at least more than he had. He was a charismatic, rugged, gorgeous, charming man who radiated a lot of warmth, all of which made him perfect for many roles. Not this one.I spent time during this film dwelling on why mustaches went out of style. I decided Hitler and mens hair requirements during World War II caused them to go out of style. Gable looked great with and without one, and of course, he kept his as it was one of his trademarks.Parnell is not a good movie, and it was hard to concentrate on it.

The character of Parnell has interested me ever since I read James Joyce's Ulysses. I caught this movie by accident when channel surfing and landed on TCM, the source of many old movie nuggets. "Parnell" brings us some first rate actors, from Clark Gable to Myrna Loy, Edmund Gwyn and Donald Crisp. The viewer sees the main outline of the controversy involving Charles Parnell and Kitty O'Shea and its impact on the Irish Free State bill. The movie is dressed up in melodrama with violin music to the strains of Irish ballads. This cloying treatment, not unusual in Hollywood, does not detract from the story of a great man and the overlooked merits of this film. Parnell brought the Irish factions together to achieve a significant breakthrough in his time and might have saved many troubles. Parnell was the stuff of greatness and his story has been enshrined in history and literature. We know that the struggle for Ireland continued beyond his life; still, his story reverberates. This movie gives a sense of the tragedy but the poor sound and grainy film are a bit of an irritation. Also, the choice of Clark Gable, Hollywood's rugged icon of the 1930's, for the role of Parnell, falls flat. This is unfortunate because the movie is far from a disaster. Nevertheless, I would like to see a film with a more complete story, with more character development and background. It would tell the epic tale of Parnell's achievements and the forces that shaped Ireland in the late nineteenth century. The British movie industry does those period movies very well. This movie gives us a taste of that history.

When I saw that "Parnell" was coming up on TCM, I eagerly TIVO'd it, as an avid Gable fan and a rabid Loy fan. Plus, it enjoys an infamous reputation as a stinker and Gables worst movie. Coincidently I had earlier this week watched "Gone with the Wind" in it's entirety for the first time in about 5 years. This reinforced my three emotions about "Wind": It's the greatest movie ever made though not the best; It's script is a cloying, almost craven ode to the old South including the racist fantasy of happy slaves "diggin' fo' da South!";Lastly that as great a cast as it has, and how wonderful Vivian Leigh is, Gable steals the picture. He IS Rhett Butler. The film slows whenever he is offscreen, and lights up when he is on. No Gable, and Selznick has half the picture.Having seen "Parnell" (and I made myself watch it twice) I agree with other reviewers that other actors might have been better suited to the script and the director. However, I utterly disagree that that Gable is miscast;He could easily been great in this: He (and the rest of the film)were mis-DIRECTED. I can't imagine how this picture came to completion under the strict system at MGM. Stahl should have been yanked off and sent packing after the first days rushes. Was Louis B. Mayer off somewhere in space? It is the most shocking directorial failure I have ever seen from MGM.Gable merely followed his direction, which I think must have been "Clark, I want you to think of Ronald Coleman underplaying. Now I want you to do it just like that, but think Coloeman on opium....and kinda fey" It is extremely obvious that Stahl imagined this role for Coleman, Leslie Howard, Robert Donat or even as someone else has said, Walter Pigeon. It only makes it worse that that the real George Parnell was much closer to Rhett Butler than he was to the scipt of this piece.Gable, unlike todays leading men, was notoriously not a creampuff. I am frankly surprised that after this thing flopped, he didn't beat the hell out of Stahl. Famously, Gable was afraid of period pieces after this and reluctant to play Rhett. But having now seen Parnell, I believe that this experience also lead him to be wary of "Wind"s first director, George Cukor who, like Stahl, was known for "womens pictures", and summarily helped lead to Cukors dismissal from that film.Having said all this, if you have the chance to see it, do. it's not a zero...maybe a 3.BTW, as a postscript: Someone commented that Gable doesn't affect an Irish accent, which is probably wise....remember, he was the only one in Gone With the Wind without a bad Southern accent :-)

I am an avid lover of the book THE FIFTY WORST FILMS by Harry Medved. It's brilliantly written and funny. However, a few times the book lists movies that are poor but really don't approach awfulness. This movie is one of them (along with THAT HAGEN GIRL and SWING YOUR LADY). While I will gladly admit that it is about Gable's worst film from the mid to late 1930s, it's certainly better than some movies he did in 1931 when he wasn't yet a star. Also, with so many bad films from Hollywood, this movie just seems poor--not bad. After all, even with a saccharine script, this movie STILL stars Myrna Loy and Clark Gable and how bad can a film be when it features these fine actors? Yes, it's true that Clark as Parnell is pretty wussy and unbelievable (and completely unlike Gable in other films, but I actually saw some merit, albeit little, in the film and just can't accept that it deserves a 1 or even a 2.