Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Blistering performances.

A hit Broadway farce, by the estimable playwright Joseph Fields, gets annoyingly Hollywood-ized in this Warners product, unsubtly written and loudly directed by James V. Kern. Its stage origins are obvious, as it's nearly all set in a Washington bridal suite, where doors slam. Boy, do they slam. Ann Sheridan (the disagreeable one), Alexis Smith (the glamorous one), and Jane Wyman (the stupid one--no one is particularly well cast) all find out they're not really married to their bridegrooms, while Eve Arden, who's pretty funny given substandard material, totes a rifle and a Russian accent. The men have less to do, but you get early glimpses of Craig Stevens and Jack Carson, and Charlie Ruggles does what he can with the unappetizing part of a lecherous old bureaucrat. Irene Manning, Alan Mowbray, and Regis Toomey are on the sidelines, and a cast like this is worth watching. But gosh, this one is shrill.

As the poster for this movie reveals, it was based on a very successful Broadway comedy. And that comedy must have been a door- slamming farce of the French variety played around a hotel room, such as you find in many of Feydeau's comedies. It doesn't have a farce's face pace, though, and that's a real problem.There is lots of talent here, so that's not the problem. It's just that it is sometimes misused, or underused. Having Jane Wyman play stupid, for example, seems like a real waste, and not a particularly successful one. I suspect the real problem was the direction. If this worked on Broadway, and evidently it did, it must have moved faster and been funnier. This was James V. Kern's first shot at directing a movie, and he evidently didn't know how to bring off a farce on the screen.There are other problems as well.I don't know who thought to put Alexis Smith and Ann Sheridan, who look fairly alike anyway, in this movie and then coif them with the same sort of hairdos, but it was not a great idea.Alan Mowbray preparing his radio talk in the middle of the mayhem is a flat steal from Sheridan Whiteside in *The Man Who Came to Dinner*, and the comparison doesn't do this movie any favors. There's nothing wrong with this movie. It's just not memorable.

Two love birds are cooing and romancing each other as chatty ditz Jane Wyman and irritable Jack Carson go to a justice of the peace to get married. When they come out as bride and groom, the love birds are now biting at each other. "Yaa taa taa, yaa taa taa", Carson screeches at his new wife, making talking motions with his hands. A snarky man peaks out and the viewers know that all is not what it appears to be. The loving couple arrive in overcrowded wartime Washington D.C. where the hotel lobby is overrun with people desperate for a room. Another newlywed Ann Sheridan is busy taking a bath in the room they check into and refuses to budge. This means war! Take the catty humor of "The Women", throw in war time politics and a few dozen men, and you have "The Doughgirls", the film version of the hit Broadway play of a couple of seasons before.This is not the Jane Wyman audiences know from "Johnny Belinda" or the powerful matriarch of "Falcon Crest". She is a cheery dumbbell who doesn't do dictation verbatim-she does it word for word! And when she finds out that the woman in the tub is her old pal from the chorus, she begins her marriage with more trouble than a dozen mother-in-laws could cause! Next in is another old pal, Alexis Smith, Carson's lecherous boss Charlie Ruggles ("The Parent Trap's" loving grandfather), and a hysterical Natasha-like (of Boris/Rocky/Bullwinkle fame) Eve Arden, dressed out in a military uniform, always carping "I would like a fish". "Live?", Wyman asks. "No, dead.", she says, intoning a deadpan voice that Virginia O'Brien would envy. Then, there is Irene Manning, the cold-blooded ex-wife of Sheridan's husband, who comes in as someone changes the wedding march to the funeral march upon spotting her. These are a wacky group of people of all kinds. The situation isn't at all believable, but oh, what fun it is! World War II audiences needed laughs like this, and Warner Brothers gave it to em' good here. Everybody gets a chance to shine.There's humorous bits by the society matron who uses the women to watch factory women's babies, the perplexed hotel manager ("People who don't pay their bills shouldn't shoot guns out the window"), the beleaguered spouses of Anne Sheridan and Alexis Smith (neither legal as well), and the Lou Costello like man who keeps creeping into the room trying to get some sleep. Arden steals the film from the moment she appears, and relishes it much like Dianne Wiest in "Bullets Over Broadway". She is hysterical leading the hotel maids in a brief song of the items she is exchanging at a pawn shop. Unfortunately, comedy was mostly overlooked by the Oscars in the 40's, as Arden's lack of a Supporting nomination is a true Hollywood crime.I'd like to also pay tribute to Warner Brothers' sound system, which is unlike any of its era. The crispy clear audio was as notable to Warner Brothers as the Technicolor of 20th Century Fox and the art deco looks at MGM. This is just a hysterically funny, funny film that I've shared with half a dozen friends long before Turner Classic Movies was around, and could watch at least once a year without not laughing.

Amazing what you can do with the lowly soybean. Not only can you make gasoline out of it but you can make eight year old scotch, caviar, and horseradish. Just think of how many horses that could save.This movie is a little gem. Jane Wyman is a hoot. After seeing her in nothing but fifties weepies and Falcon Crest her turn as a scatterbrain newlywed bride having her honeymoon interrupted by two of her best friends and then all and sundry shows her as an adept comedian.Alexis Smith and Ann Sheridan as the girlfriends, Jack Carson (always a pleasure to see) and Eve Arden as the Russian soldier (Cyd Charise had to have watched this movie over and over because her Ninotchka accent is a dead on mimic of Eve Arden but with a more serious tone) round out the perfect cast for this screwball comedy.This movie is just plain funny. It has fast and sassy snappy patter and just breezes along.Check out those hairstyles! The clothes! How well photographed it is!This film might seem odd to modern sensibilities, but let yourself go back to a simpler time where the motion picture code ruled and there was a censor right around every corner. I was rather surprised by a scene involving a bottle of scotch, the bell boy and the room he is told to take the bottle into.The Doughgirls is fast, fun and funny. Just go along for the ride and you won't be disappointed. Let the hilarity ensue!