From my favorite movies..

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Watching some of her movies when growing up with my mum and dad,the only thing that I know about Ginger Rogers is her famous on screen partner Fred Astaire.Taking a look on BBC iPlayer,I was intrigued to find a non-Astaire Rogers film,which led to me gingerly getting set to meet the star of midnight.The plot:Whilst trying to track down a friends missing girlfriend, Clay 'Dal' Dalzell attends a show with pal Donna Mantin.During the performance,it hits Dalzell that stage singer Mary Smith, (dubbed "Star of Midnight") (who dresses in black with a veil covering her face)is the missing girlfriend.Yelling out this fact (smart move!) Dalzell causes Smith to run off stage and disappear. Being a fellow audience member,gossip columnist Tommy Tennant claims to have secret details on Smith,but is mysteriously killed in Dalzell's apartment. Faced with his life of luxury coming to an end,Dalzell has to prove his innocence before the midnight hour. View on the film:Stepping on stage a week after completing Roberta,(and after Midnight,she would 6 days later start filming Top Hat!) the glamorous Ginger Rogers gives a sparkling performance as Mantin,with Rogers making the light Screwball Comedy exchanges with Dalzell flow across the screen,and Rogers giving Mantin a pleasant, somewhat clumsy, investigating eye. Showing no sign of being a "thin" presence on screen, William Powell gives a debonair performance as Dalzell,who appears to solve the case with a mere click of the fingers,whilst Powell gives his one line exchanges with Rogers a dry wit.Rolling out their adaptation of Arthur Somers Roche's book just 2 years after Prohibition ended,the screenplay by Howard J. Green/ Anthony Veiller & Edward Kaufman sips up the new era with everyone having a drink in hand,and a number of Mantin's and Dalzell's exchanges being drink puns. Presenting a caper tale on the works,the writers strike a fine balance between easy-going Comedy and a mystery with some sly (and an ending which beats Scobby Doo by decades!)turn,as every attempt Dalzell makes to unmask the killer,leads to himself. Whilst the movie does craft an eerie women in black and fully displays Rogers lavish costumes,director Stephen Roberts disappointingly keeps things stage-bound,with would-be set- pieces being kept off screen via conversations between the two,as Roberts gives the caper a Film Noir atmosphere unmasking,as the star of midnight sings for the last time.

Whether playing Philo Vance or Nick Charles, William Powell always served it up with sophistication, a beautiful woman, a little wisecrack and a lot of martinis. On loan to RKO, Powell did two of these. Here, with Ginger Rogers by his side, he gets involved with murder among the theatrical crowd. It is all very nice to look at with smashing art deco sets and a great supporting cast, including Ralph Morgan, Gene Lockhart and Paul Kelly. "Bitch extraordinaire" Vivian Oakland is extremely amusing as the femme fatal. While Ginger is fine, she's not Myrna Loy, and Powell isn't Fred Astaire. Unlike Astaire, William Powell already had "sex" and Rogers doesn't bring anything to the role in the case of class that out-shined the marvelous Loy (paraphrasing a quote by Katharine Hepburn about Astaire and Rogers). The denouncement is clever but for some reason, it is all rather familiar in a way that had been done better.

STAR OF MIDNIGHT could easily be mistaken for a Nick and Nora mystery, so similar are the central characters played by WILLIAM POWELL and GINGER ROGERS. Powell is his usual debonair self as a lawyer who sets about to solve a murder he becomes mixed up in and Ginger is her charming self as the girl who wants to marry him some day. The police even suspect Powell may have committed the murder of a gossip columnist.The mystery is full of suspicious looking characters who might be at the bottom of the crime, but a quick look at the cast and I guessed who the murderer was before the plot even unraveled. From then on, I concentrated on the art deco settings for Powell's pad, especially that modern looking bathroom shower.PAUL KELLY has a good tough supporting role and RALPH MORGAN is a distinguished looking gentleman (a more serious version of his brother, Frank Morgan), and LESLIE FENTON does what he can with the role of another suspect. GENE LOCKHART is amusing as Powell's butler.Typical murder mystery from the '30s combining screwball comedy and the usual twists and turns.

Yes, "Star of Midnight" is a bit of RKO Radio Pictures reworking, or ripping off, MGM's "The Thin Man," but so what? It's good in it's own right. William Powell plays rich and debonair lawyer, Clay Dalzell, who gets involved in a murder, and is himself, a suspect. At his side, Ginger Rogers, co-starring as Powell's romantic companion. This pairing of Powell and Rogers is not as perfect as was Powell and Loy, it's a good match up, never-the-less . The mystery centers around the disappearance of of an actress -- the star of a play entitled "Midnight" -- hence from which the film get its title. All this mystery is wrapped with over- the - top elegance, and sophisticated humor, that was so typical of Hollywood films of the 1930's . You may guess who the murderer is, but the motive should come as a surprise -- and neat one it is !