Pretty Good

i must have seen a different film!!

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

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Yes, undoubtedly one of the funniest films ever made, The Perfect Woman is that rare comedy than can be seen over and over again with no loss of humor or diminution in its appeal. The film's extraordinary ability to repeatedly entertain is due partly to its witty dialogue, risible situations and cleverly delineated characters; partly to the inspired comic portrayals contributed by almost the entire cast, particularly Patricia Roc (who never looked more charming), Nigel Patrick (delightfully in his element as a temporarily embarrassed young man of "good connections"), Stanley Holloway (the most versatile of gentleman's gentleman), Miles Malleson (impossible to surpass as irremediably absent-minded, eccentric yet lovable old duffers), David Hurst (a paragon of slow-witted incompetence) and Fred Berger (a short fuse splittingly compounded by his fractured English). Nor must we forget to commend Irene Handl, Jerry Desmonde and Anita Sharp-Bolster. As the robot, Pamela Devis is perhaps not quite as mechanical or automaton-like in some of her actions as would make for the greatest hilarity, but that small defect could probably be sheeted home to the make-up man and the director. Otherwise, the direction is surprisingly fluid and professional. The comic timing is always spot on and the director, by means of rapid pacing and neat compositions has managed to completely disguise the script's stage origins. Supporting technical credits are likewise highly appealing. OTHER VIEWS: At first sight, Patricia Roc, who gave such a convincing account of a chain-smoking neurotic in Love Story (1944), would hardly seem a prime contender for The Perfect Woman. Yet here, assisted by flattering costumes, make-up, hair styling and photography - plus her own innate charm, skills and talent - she seems a sure winner! - T.H.So many funny lines and situations, so hilariously played, I was absolutely cracking up at our Hollywood Classics screening - despite the fact that I'd already seen the movie three or four times. - G.A.

While this film sometimes has the subtlety of a Punch and Judy show, at other times it certainly brought me good laughs, and it milked many jokes out of the Mechanical Woman topic. Then there are foreigner stereotypes about the Italian hotel manager and the Swiss waiter, some being less painful than others. Then again, the catastrophic finale triggered by "love" very well wraps it up... The scenes in the Underground were quite well executed, where the smoking ears were a bit over the top.I watched this shortly after "Die Puppe" (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) which had a similar concept as center of the plot: an artisan builds a lifelike woman robot as the likeness of his daughter/niece, but for public appearance, the original must double up as the copy, the real woman acting as if she were the robot. A mouse/hairpin destroys the illusion.In this juxtaposition, I found The Perfect Woman a very interesting watch - compare how Ossi Oswalda (in Die Puppe) and Patricia Roc in this play the most difficult role, both halfway plausible, and very charming.I give it 9/10 - not for great cinematic art, but for the fun I had.

What a pity. This film could have been a little gem. But it had an inferior director with no vision, Bernard Knowles, and was totally ruined by almost maniacally unrestrained over-acting by Nigel Patrick and Stanley Holloway, who are about as subtle as a pair of howling hyenas. The story had great promise. It concerns an absent-minded genius who has invented a robot which looks like a woman, and in fact is made to resemble his pretty young niece, charmingly played by Patricia Roc. The niece ends up impersonating the girl robot, to what should have been hilarious effect. However, none of it comes off. The genius is brilliantly played by Miles Malleson, with some terrific comic moments, and there is another superb supporting performance by the always-reliable Irene Handl. But they cannot save the film, alas. If only Nigel Patrick and Stanley Holloway had been replaced by robots, it might have worked.

I stumbled upon this movie one afternoon on TV. It's a pacey movie when compared to many British Movies of this era (Bernard Knowles experience as cinematographer on Hitch's 39 Steps may have benefitted him in this respect). The cast are splendid, if somewhat theatrical (English Farce), especially Miles Malleson as the dotty old inventor.What fascinated me most was the similarities I began to notice with the acting of Leslie Banks as Cavendish with that of the exasperation of Basil Fawlty in "Fawlty Towers" a British TV show by ex-python John Cleese. The tortured expressions and heavily exaggerated body language were the first things to alert me to the "FT" connection. But there was more...The pace increased exponentially along with the emerging complications of taking a beautiful female robot (impersonated by Malleson's neice) to a honeymoon suite in a posh hotel until the film ended in total chaos.A foreign servant who spoke very little english and frequently misunderstood his manager's requests (Hmm, Manuel methinks!).